← History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
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Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich online at historyofphilosophy.net Today's Between Infinity and the Void Blaise Pascal from the vantage point of our modern secular age, the 17th century presents a paradox. On the one hand, it was the century that saw the beginnings of modern science, discoveries coming thick and fast thanks to empirical methodology and improved instrumentation. On the other hand, it was a deeply religious, some might say superstitious time, when political controversies and major European wars still raged over theological issues that are nowadays largely forgotten. In fact, you don't have to survey the whole century to locate this fault line. It runs right through the career of a single man, Blaise Pascal. He was one of the foremost mathematical and scientific minds of the age, yet also one of its most heartfelt spiritual authors. Nor is the apparent tension between these two sides of his thoughts only an anachronistic figment in the minds of today's readers. Pascal noticed it too, saying that he deliberately abandoned the sciences to study humankind. Instead, he felt it was a sound choice, writing, knowledge of the laws of morality will always console me. For lack of knowledge of the physical sciences, we can date the turn in his biography with unusual precision. It was on the evening of November 23, 1654, that Pascal had a mystical experience that inspired him to write down a memorial of religious piety which he kept on his person for the rest of his life. He largely, though not completely, stopped working on topics like mathematics and devoted himself to religious writing. A further spur to this project was an extraordinary event that occurred at the abbey of port Royale. Pascal's 10 year old niece, who was in residence there, suffered from a horrible eye tumor. Doctors recommended cauterization, a horrific procedure that might kill her. Just before the procedure was to be carried out, a relic was brought to the monastery, a thorn from Christ's crown. When it was touched to the poor girl's eye, she was suddenly cured. The Jansenist community at Port Royale was thrilled and emboldened by this clear sign of God's approval. The leading Jansenist, Antoine Arnauld, held it up as an ideal example for showing that it can be rational to believe in miracles. Many people witnessed these events. Medical doctors were called in to confirm that the girl was healed. Even the Jesuits, the archenemies of the Jansenists, conceded that the miracle had really happened. In the wake of this episode, Pascal resolved to write a treatise to bring readers to the Christian faith. It was never completed, but the scattered notes which Pascal loosely organized by theme, which were published posthumously as the Penses, meaning thoughts. It's an extraordinary text which combines intense religiosity with an ironic and aphoristic wit. If Teresa of Avila had co authored a book with Montaigne, the result might be something like the irony and wit at least come recognizably from the same man who had earlier engaged in disputes over scientific matters, since in that context, too, Pascal had shown himself to be a master of cutting and persuasive rhetoric. His most enduring contribution in science is in the area of fluid dynamics. This doesn't sound particularly relevant to philosophy, but it most certainly is, because one aspect of Pascal's achievement was to help establish the possibility of void space. As we know, this was a point of contention between Aristotelians and Cartesians on the one hand, and atomists like Gassandi on the other hand. We've seen various attempts to settle the question by arguing from first principles. Thus, Descartes claimed that extension is the primary attribute of body, so it is contradictory to postulate an extended space that has no body in it. Pascal's approach was instead empirical. He built upon the work of Evangelista Torricelli, who had filled a glass tube with mercury and then inverted it in a pool of mercury covered by water. Torricelli found that the level of the mercury in the tube dropped, leaving what would seem to be an empty or void space at the top of the tube. Pascal repeated the experiment publicly with numerous variations, using different fluids like wine and various shaped vessels, to show the generality of the result. He then wrote up his results in an effort to convince others that the reality of vacuum had been established. But not everyone was ready to admit that that apparently empty space was indeed empty. Maybe it was full of mercury fumes or rarefied air that had managed to work its way through the barrier created by the water and mercury, or even through the pores in the glass. Descartes, for one, adhered to his rejection of void, saying that the empty space at the top of the tube must be full of what he called subtle matter. Another skeptic was Etienne Noel, who, in a debate with Pascal, I read your experiments about the vacuum, which I find very good and ingenious, but I do not understand this apparent vacuum which appears in the tube. I say that it is a body because it acts like a body in that it transmits light with refractions and reflections, and it retards the movement of another body. Pascal was annoyed with these refusals to accept the plain verdict of the senses. He summarily dismissed Descartes proposal about subtle matter, for which Descartes provided no evidence. We find more reason to deny its existence because it cannot be proved, than to believe in it for the sole reason that one cannot prove that it does not exist. Speaking of subtlety, a more subtle question prompted by the Torricelli experiment was what determined the height of the mercury in the tube? In other words, why did it fall down to some extent, leaving a void space above it, but without rushing out completely? The answer, Pascal thought, must be the weight of the air pressing down on the surface of the water in the bowl. He further proposed that in general, the force exerted by any fluid, including air, is a function of the fluid's vertical dimension. Thus the same amount of water will produce a lot more pressure if it is filled into a narrow column than if it is allowed to spread into a shallow pool. Again, Pascal described instruments of various shapes to test this, though as was pointed out at the time, it was unclear which of these experiments he actually performed and which he only imagined. Some of the scenarios he wrote about were clearly impossible, like the ones that called for glass tubes that were too long to manufacture at the time. One experiment that definitely was performed not by Pascal but at his behest, is especially famous. He got his brother in law to do the mercury tube experiment at the base of a mountain and then at the top of the mountain, making careful measurements in front of trustworthy witnesses. As predicted by Pascal's theory, the height of the mercury in the tube was lower at the top of the mountain because the thinner air at higher altitude has less weight. Thus was discovered the principle that explains how barometers work. The celebrated experiment led to a further dispute in this case as to who could claim priority for the discovery. Descartes said that he was the one who first conceived of the experiment and Marsenne had already described it in print. Still, it's Pascal who is usually acknowledged by historians of science, who tend to feel that thinking of an experiment is not as good as actually carrying it out. A work by Pascal on geometric method reveals a good deal about his understanding of such scientific proofs. Echoing ideas one can find in Aristotle, he says that one should begin by defining one's terms and laying down axioms, and then produce demonstrations on that basis. As Aristotle also noted, it's a mistake to try to prove or explain things that are self evident, since one will just wind up explaining what is more clear in terms of what is less clear. Pascal's writings on vacuum adhere to this policy, laying it down as a principle that, as Torricelli had already put it, we live submerged at the base of an ocean of elementary air, and we know by indubitable experience that the air has weight. Possible experiments simply confirm the expectations one might have on the basis of these principles. This is not to say that experiments are a kind of afterthought. Pascal once said that they are the real masters that one should follow in physics. But his confidence in principles outweighed, if you will, his confidence in experimental results. For instance, he correctly predicted that a partly inflated balloon would swell if carried to a higher altitude, again owing to the thinner air pressing against it. He was able to confirm this, but said that if the balloon had not inflated, he would have put this down to faulty equipment, not faulty theory. While all this might seem like the methodology of an unrestrained optimist, Pascal turns out to fit squarely into one of the stories we've been following in recent the skeptical tendency among early modern French thinkers. Already in his work on geometrical methods, Pascal is under no illusions about the power of rational argument. He says that people form their beliefs based on either reason or will, and will is by far the more common. So usually, if you want to persuade someone of something, you need to delight them rather than give them good reasons. When explaining his own methods in science, he sticks to rational arguments, since these have clearer rules. But in the works he wrote in the wake of his spiritual experience, he showed himself to have plenty of rhetorical technique and also profound misgivings about human reason. A report of a dialogue between Pascal and a friend following the conversion was written down by a third party and only after Pascal's death, but it is nonetheless revealing about his evolving ideas about knowledge and faith. He apparently contrasted Epictetus to Montaigne, taking Epictetus as a champion of human reason and and Montaigne as a skeptical ironist, which is a fair assessment in both cases. As a Stoic, Epictetus was convinced that human reason is capable of realizing full virtue through ethical knowledge. As a Pyrrhonist skeptic, Montaigne was beset by doubts to the extent that his uncertainty goes round in an endless and restless circle. For Pascal, both were wrongheaded. Epictetus thought too much of humankind, Montaigne too little. Pascal's own middle path is explored in the Pensee. At first glance, the work, or rather the pile of notes for a projected work, seems to owe much more to Montaigne than to Epictetus. Indeed, though Montaigne is mentioned only occasionally, the whole work is clearly inspired by his essays, not just because of its similar style, but because it sometimes borrows quotations that Montaigne too had included. Like the essays, the Pensee are famous for their epigrams and aphorisms. The most famous is probably this. If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have changed. But there are plenty of others worth enjoying. Being unable to ensure that force obeys justice. We have made it just to obey force. And here are three gems that appear within just a few pages of one another. If everyone knew what was said about him, they would not be four friends in the world. Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the sexual act. If a workman was sure of dreaming every night for 12 hours that he was king, I think he'd be almost as happy as a king who dreamt every night for 12 hours that he was a workman. Despite his deep debt to Montaigne, Pascal is critical of him, writing that Montaigne makes it too hard to get his better ideas, jumps around between topics too much and is too long winded, and talks too much about himself. Pascal has considerably less self regard. He abandoned science to write about humanity, not to write about Blaise Pascal, but no less than Montaigne, Pascal is alive to the frailties of humankind, not least the impotence of human reason. Part of the problem is our self regard, another of his best aphorisms. We are more easily convinced, usually by reasons we have found by ourselves, than by those which have occurred to others. But another part of the problem lies with reason itself. Reason is appliable in any direction and argues from contradictory principles. We are born ignorant, and those of us who are wise realize in the end that they must live with ignorance, rather than priding themselves on the smattering of knowledge that they have acquired along the way. Indeed, the skeptics from Sextus Empiricus to Montaigne and Charon are right that rational argument can rarely persuade us of anything, not even that we are awake instead of dreaming. That example should, of course, remind us of Descartes, Meditations and the evil demon. Skeptical hypothesis also makes a brief appearance. But when Descartes is named explicitly, it is not for his contributions to the history of skepticism. Rather, Pascal agrees with Gossendi that Descartes was an unconvincing dogmatist whose philosophical and scientific claims fell short. Pascal mocks philosophers like him for writing works with overambitious titles like on the Principles of Things. Two notes are damning in their Descartes, useless and uncertain and right against those who delve too deeply into the disciplines. Descartes. But Pascal refuses to content himself with pure skepticism. He sees humans as caught between their inability to prove anything and their unquenchable longing for truth. A philosopher like Epictetus or Descartes will always founder on the rocks of uncertainty, because he depends on human reason alone. But remember, we don't always, or even usually believe by reason. Mostly we believe by will or, as Pascal tends to say here in the Pensee, the heart. This is why skeptical arguments, like all arguments, are ultimately unsatisfactory. They can never overwhelm our intuitive grasp of certain phenomena like time and space, nor dissuade us from our feeling that certain things are true. Of course, Pascal's conversion experience was precisely a powerful feeling that the Christian God was present to him, and he wants his readers to have this feeling too. So he's not really in the business of offering arguments for the existence of God or for the truth of religion. In fact, he says this is pointless, since one needs not rational belief, but faith in Christ. The proofs of God offered by metaphysicians can only convince the mind, which is not enough for Pascal, given our finite powers of understanding. Pascal says that it is incomprehensible that God should exist, and incomprehensible that he should not, that the soul should exist in the body, that we should have no soul, that the world should be created, that it should not, that original sin should exist, and that it should not. Nonetheless, he of course does believe, or rather feels, that God exists, that there is an immortal soul, that the world was created, and that humans are born into original sin. Pascal's epistemology is intimately bound up with that last item, humanity's sinfulness, or, as he often says, wretchedness. Often he strikes a rather pessimistic note, as when he says, we want truth and find only uncertainty in ourselves. We search for happiness and find only wretchedness and death. But he thinks it is just as dangerous to convince humans that they are utterly wretched as it would be to convince them of their unalloyed greatness. That humans can realize their own wretchedness is in itself a sign of their greatness. One might even say that Pascal thinks humans are redeemed by their ability to do exactly what he is doing in the Pensee, we should reflect on our own nature and our modest place in the order of things, which lies somewhere between the incomprehensible vastness of the universe and the ungraspable tininess of the smallest parts of matter. In what might be a rueful allusion to his earlier scientific work on the vacuum, he says that we are suspended between the two gulfs of the infinite and the void. This line of thought leads Pascal to reject another aspect of Pyronian skepticism, though the point would be just as relevant to any of the Hellenistic schools. The skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics all wanted to show us how we can attain what they called ataraxia, meaning freedom from disturbance, a restful, calm life free of all anxiety and upheaval. That's what you could get by suspending judgment according to skeptics like Sextus, by becoming perfectly virtuous according to Stoics like Epictetus, or by avoiding pain according to Epicureans like Lucretius and more recently, Gossandi. Pascal finds this whole way of framing the purpose of philosophy to be psychologically unconvincing. For him, the great threat to human happiness is not disturbance, but nearly its contrary boredom. Philosophers consider it ridiculous that nobles spend all day hunting for a rabbit they could easily buy from a butcher. The philosophers do not know that it is only the hunt, not the kill, they are looking for. They sincerely think they are seeking peace and quiet, whereas they are really seeking agitation, not unlike fluid released from pressure. We are always trying to fill the void in our existence, however we can. The best way to do that is, is to keep busy, even if it is with trivialities. This, not power or luxury as such, is why it is so good to be a king. You always have people around to take your mind off your own triviality, your speck like existence in the enormity of the universe. Such statements could easily come from a Frenchman living, 400 years later, an existentialist, smoking cigarettes and sipping beer in a Parisian cafe while pondering inauthenticity, the meaningless of life, and the question of who is going to pay for all the cigarettes and beer. But for Pascal, such feelings point in a different direction, towards the true infinity of God, and specifically the God of the Christians. Among the religions of the world, or at least among those Pascal knows about, only Christianity has taught both the greatness and the wretchedness of humanity. The doctrine of the Incarnation, which proposes that God humbled himself to become man, is embodies both ideas. But the more important Christian dogma in the Pensee is original sin. When we understand that we are wretched and no better than animals. We should also realize that we must have fallen from a previous higher condition. Here we see the influence on Pascal of Jansenism, which played a role in his life starting when he was in his 20s. The later stage of Pascal's career was devoted to this religious movement. He wrote in defense of his fellow Jansenist, Antoine Arnault, and even seems to have contributed something to the development of the Port Oya logic, of which Arnaud was one of the two main authors. We'll get onto all that in the coming episodes, but first we need to do justice to Pascal's most famous philosophical the Wager. You probably know the basic idea, which is that it would be in our interest to believe in God, since we stand to win an infinite reward if he exists and we believe in him. I said just now that Pascal claims not to be interested in rationally proving that God exists. His Wager is no exception to that rule. Since it does nothing to convince us that God does in fact exist, it only seeks to show us that it would be prudent to bet that he does. This novel way of arguing in favor of religion has captured the imagination of many philosophers, though I have to admit I've never met one who was persuaded to believe in God on this basis. Nonetheless, you might as well take the chance to join me next time for Pascal's Wager here on the history of philosophy, without any gaps.