Pascal & the Arts of the Mind

Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-521-03262-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 46, 284 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 410 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in French

This book studies the ways in which Pascal posed and solved intellectual problems in three very different areas of his work: mathematics and mathematical physics, religious experience and theology, communication and controversy. Hugh Davidson shows how three of the classical 'liberal arts', rhetoric, dialectic and geometry, pervade Pascal's method as liberating and guiding influences in his search for truth. They appear throughout his production and are used and adapted with great skill both in his attacks on tradition in mathematics and physics and in his defences of tradition in the sphere of religion and morality. Professor Davidson throws light on both the diversity and the unity of Pascal's thought, and places it in the context of other seventeenth-century innovations in the use of traditional disciplines.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Davidson, Hugh M.

Sheringham, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface and acknowledgments; 1. Nature and the world; 2. Elements, complexes and geometric; 3. Multiplicity, unity and dialectic; 4. Ends, means and rhetoric; 5. Restatement and conclusion; Bibliography; Index.