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Leighton Library has 1675 edition of "Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets, qui ont esté trouvées après sa mort parmy ses papiers" writings of Blaise Pascal
Added at 07:41 on 19 August 2025
The Leighton Library has a 1675 edition of "Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets, qui ont esté trouvées après sa mort parmy ses papiers", the writings of French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher Blaise Pascal, who died #OnThisDay 19 August 1662.
He had been a child prodigy and made important contributions to the study of fluids, probability theory and did pioneering work on mechanical calculators.
This book was one of the earliest posthumous printings of Blaise Pascal’s unfinished magnum opus on Christian apologetics. When he died he had left behind a trove of notes intended for a book defending Christianity. This book pulled these fragments together, helping to disseminate his ideas more widely across Europe.
The book was controversial enough to be placed on the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (list of forbidden books), underscoring its provocative stance on faith, reason, and skepticism.
