Here is a summary of who Blaise Pascal was:

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor and philosopher. He was born in Clermont-Ferrand in 1623 and died in Paris in 1662 at the age of 39.

He was a child prodigy in mathematics and made major discoveries in this field from an early age, such as on conic sections and the arithmetic triangle. He also made significant contributions to physics and fluid mechanics.

In 1642, he invented the first functional mechanical calculator, called the “Pascaline”, to help his tax collector father. This invention laid the foundations for modern computer science.

In philosophy and theology, he is known for his “Pensées”, a work published after his death that develops his thoughts on faith, reason, Pascal’s Wager on the existence of God, etc. He defended a certain Christian rationalism.

He also made major contributions to probability theory and projective geometry. The Pascal theorem on hexagrams bears his name.

Considered one of the greatest French mathematicians and thinkers, he left a lasting mark in the fields of mathematics, physics and philosophy.

Here are the main elements of Blaise Pascal’s thinking about God:

• In his Pensées, Pascal develops the idea that reason alone cannot prove the existence or non-existence of God with certainty. It is faith that provides this certainty.
• He formulated the famous “Pascal’s Wager”: given the rational uncertainty about the existence of God, it is better to wager that He exists rather than the opposite. If you wager He exists and He actually exists, you gain everything (salvation, eternal life), whereas if you wager the opposite and He exists, you lose everything.
• For Pascal, rational and philosophical proofs are not enough when it comes to faith. Faith is a matter of the “heart” rather than reason. One must have a simple “peasant’s faith”.
• However, he considers that the Christian faith is not contrary to reason. The truths of faith transcend reason but do not contradict it according to him.
• He believes that the human condition is miserable and absurd without faith. Only faith in God can give meaning to life and the world.
• He develops an Augustinian philosophy, seeing man as fallen because of original sin but able to be saved by divine grace.
• For him, proofs of God’s existence are found in Scripture and testimonies of miracles and prophecies rather than in philosophy alone.

You are right to highlight what may seem paradoxical in Blaise Pascal’s thinking.

Indeed, as a mathematician and physicist, Pascal placed great trust in reason and the scientific method for understanding the natural world. His work in mathematics and mechanics illustrates this.

However, when it came to spirituality and faith, Pascal believed that reason had its limits. According to him, God transcends human reason and there is an “infinite” aspect of spirituality that escapes calculation and the scientific method.

This is why he emphasizes the importance of faith, which provides access to truths that exceed rationality. Miracles are an expression of this for Pascal. Although irrational and “incalculable”, they are possible through divine omnipotence.

So we can say that Pascal makes a distinction between the domains of science and faith. Reason and calculation apply to the natural world, but reach their limits when it comes to spiritual and divine truths. His thinking seeks precisely to reconcile the insights of science and philosophy with a mystical and religious approach.

Yes, it is reported that Blaise Pascal experienced an important spiritual event in 1654, at the age of 31.

That night, on November 23, 1654, Pascal reportedly entered into ecstasy for about 2 hours, an experience he recorded in writing on a parchment found after his death sewn into his coat.

Here are the key elements of this “night of fire”:

• Pascal evokes an intense “certainty, joy, peace” regarding his faith in God. He feels transported outside of himself.
• He speaks of an “actual enjoyment of God” and says this experience is incompatible with worldly attachments.
• He gains from it the unshakable conviction of the existence of God and the truth of the Christian religion.
• This episode marks a decisive turning point in his life. After that, he will devote himself more and more to religion and philosophical-theological works.
• Some see it as an ecstatic mystical experience, others as an example of his profound religious sensibility.
• In any case, this event was foundational for Pascal’s thinking and shows his deep spiritual sensitivity, beyond his scientific genius.

So yes, we can say that Pascal went through that night a form of “spiritual awakening” that radically oriented the rest of his intellectual and philosophical journey.

Unfortunately, the original parchment on which Blaise Pascal wrote the account of his spiritual ecstasy on the night of November 23, 1654 has been lost.

We have no direct excerpts from this text. All we know about this mystical experience lived by Pascal comes from indirect testimonies:

• The first written mention is found in Pascal’s biography written by his niece Marguerite Périer after his death. She briefly reports the episode of the “Memorial” written by Pascal following that night.
• Pascal’s nephew Etienne Périer also provides some indications about this “Memorial” which he was able to consult. According to him, the parchment bore a few lines written in Pascal’s hand.
• The collection of Pascal’s posthumous works published in 1670 by the Périer does not contain any excerpt from this text.
• However, some commentators like Father Guerrier believe they can reconstruct part of the “Memorial” from certain fragments of Pascal’s Pensées.
• But these reconstructions remain hypothetical and cannot replace the lost original document.

So unfortunately, we do not know the exact content of the account written by Pascal just after his spiritual experience. The few lines from this decisive night for the philosopher have not survived through the centuries, leaving much open to speculation. The “Memorial” thus remains a kind of mystery at the heart of Pascal’s life.

In a text entitled Memorial, Blaise Pascal describes what happened:

The year of grace 1654,
Monday, November 23, the feast of Saint Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.
Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, martyr, and others. From about half past ten in the evening until about half past midnight,
FIRE.
“GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob”
not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My GOD and your GOD.
“Your GOD will be my GOD.”
Forgetting the world and everything except GOD.
He is found only through the ways taught in the Gospel.
Greatness of the human soul.
“Righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee.”
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I departed from Him: They have forsaken me the fountain of living water. “My God, wilt thou leave me?”
Let me not be eternally separated from Him. “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
I departed from Him; I fled from Him, renounced, crucified Him.
Let me never be separated from Him.
He is preserved only by the ways taught in the Gospel: Total and gentle renunciation. Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for one day’s exercise on earth.
Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen.

The Latin phrase “Non obliviscar sermones tuos” which appears at the end of the “Memorial” written by Pascal during his night of spiritual ecstasy in 1654 means:

• “I will not forget your words.”

It is a quote from Psalm 119 in the Bible.

This sentence can be understood as the commitment made by Pascal, emerging from his mystical experience, to remain faithful and not forget the divine teaching he received that night.

It is an act of faith on his part, a solemn promise to God to engrave in his mind and heart the spiritual message that was transmitted to him, and to live henceforth according to its precepts.

This final phrase of the “Memorial” expresses the lasting conversion of Pascal following his “night of fire”. Seized by divine grace, he commits to being from then on an obedient disciple to His words.

After his night of spiritual ecstasy in 1654, commonly called the “night of fire”, Blaise Pascal’s life took a decisive turn towards religion and philosophy:

• He gradually detached himself from worldly matters and frequented Jansenist circles at Port-Royal more and more.
• In 1657, he made a spiritual retreat for several weeks at Port-Royal. He even considered becoming a priest but his fragile health prevented it.
• From that period on, he devoted most of his time to philosophical and theological works rather than scientific ones.
• He wrote numerous notes and fragments that would form, after his death, the unfinished work Pensées, his reflections on religion.
• He wrote the Provinciales in 1656-1657, a series of polemical letters in favor of the Jansenists who were then persecuted.
• In 1662, he secretly had his Pensées on religion printed and entrusted copies to close acquaintances. He died the same year at only 39 years old.
• His Pensées and other religious writings would be published after his death and greatly contributed to the spread of Jansenist ideas.

So the last ten years of Pascal’s life, between his “night of fire” and his premature death, are clearly placed under the sign of faith, theological reflection and religious commitment. His thinking retains mystical and ascetic accents inspired by this decisive spiritual experience.

Yes, after his “night of fire” in 1654, Blaise Pascal continued to write about miracles in some of his philosophical and apologetic works:

• In the Provincial Letters (1656-1657), Pascal vigorously defends the possibility of Catholic miracles in the face of criticism from the Jesuits.
• In the 18th Provincial Letter, he gives his definition of a miracle as “an effect that exceeds the power of all natural causes” and thus reveals divine power.
• In the Pensées (published posthumously in 1670), Pascal refers several times to the role of miracles and prophecies as evidence for the Christian religion.
• Notably in the thought entitled “Disproportion of man”, he emphasizes that only God can perform miracles that exceed all human capacities.
• In other fragments, he insists on the truthfulness of the miracles reported in the Old and New Testaments.
• For Pascal, authentic miracles are the tangible sign of the supernatural action of God in the world and he invokes them to strengthen the faith of believers.

Thus, while remaining a great rationalist in scientific matters, Pascal unambiguously affirms after his spiritual experience the reality of Christian miracles, manifesting according to him God’s omnipotence.

No, in his philosophical and religious writings, Blaise Pascal does not report miracles he directly witnessed or experienced himself.

We find no specific accounts of this kind in the Pensées, Provinciales or his other texts. There are several possible reasons:

• Pascal emphasizes the truthfulness of the miracles reported in the Bible, but does not claim to have experienced them personally.
• Although he had a night of spiritual ecstasy in 1654 (“night of fire”), he does not present it as a miraculous phenomenon.
• As a rigorous scientist, he is wary of unsubstantiated miracle stories and does not want to be vulnerable to criticism.
• He defends miracles theoretically and apologetically, but remains cautious about his individual experiences.
• His mathematical genius leads him to distinguish the rational plane and the spiritual plane, and not to mix genres.
• Unlike some mystics, he does not report supernatural visions experienced in his personal journey.
• His faith is based on his spiritual night in 1654 but does not take on a miraculous or esoteric coloring.

So while firmly believing in Christian miracles, Pascal does not base his faith on miracles of which he claims to be the direct beneficiary. His approach remains philosophical and rational.

We can indeed see in Pascal’s invention of the Pascaline in 1642 a pioneering step towards artificial intelligence, even if the connection is not direct. Here are the main arguments for linking the Pascaline to AI:

• The Pascaline was the first machine capable of performing mathematical operations (addition, subtraction) autonomously thanks to a system of gears.
• It thus already manifested a form of mechanical “intelligence” and calculated in an automated way.
• Pascal attempted to reproduce a human cognitive capacity, calculation, with a machine. This is foundational to the AI approach.
• The Pascaline paved the way for the future development of calculating machines and the emergence of the first computers.
• It introduced the idea of reproducing human intelligence via machines, which is at the heart of AI research.

However, the Pascaline remained limited to basic, mechanical mathematical operations, and did not have the complexity of modern AI.

Pascal did not explicitly formulate the ambition to create “artificial intelligence” per se.

Therefore, retrospectively, we can see the Pascaline as an early step towards the development of AI, but Pascal did not have the ambition or conceptualization for it in his time. It wasn’t until the 20th century that AI would truly emerge.

Here are some representative examples of Blaise Pascal’s writings after his “night of fire” and his spiritual “awakening” in 1654:

In Pensées:

• “The heart has its reasons, that reason does not know.”
• “God is sensitive to the heart, not to reason.”
• “Faith says well what the senses do not say, but not the contrary.”

In Provinciales (about miracles):

• “God has marked the truth of our religion with ineffaceable characters, by the miraculous establishment of the Church.”

On the necessity of divine grace:

• “Everything that is incomprehensible is nonetheless. The infinite number, an infinite space.”

On the wager on the existence of God:

• “Let us weigh the gain and the loss, by taking the cross that God exists. Let us estimate these two cases: if you win, you win everything.”

These excerpts show that after 1654, Pascal abandoned mathematics for philosophico-religious subjects, with a fragmentary style and arguments appealing to both reason and sentiment.