The Independent - London, June 15th, 1996
On a September morning in 1647 (Louis XIV, aged nine, was king), a carriage drew up before the Paris house of the Pascal family, and M Rene Descartes got out. He looked like a crafty peasant. In fact, at 51, he was the most prominent mathematician-philosopher of his day. His famed Discourse divided French intellectuals into two camps - one either was or was not a "Cartesian". Blaise Pascal, 24, was not. He had no argument with Descarte's axiom "I think, therefore I am", but he was less certain about the ability of reason to prove a) the existence of God or b) the non-existence of a vacuum in ...
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