Legacy of Blaise Pascal
At once a physicist, a mathematician, an eloquent publicist in the Provinciales, and an inspired artist in the Apologie and in his private notes, Pascal was embarrassed by the very abundance of his talents. It has been suggested that it was his too concrete turn of mind that prevented his discovering the infinitesimal calculus; and in some of the Provinciales the mysterious relations of human beings with God are treated as if they were a geometrical problem. But these considerations are far outweighed by the profit that he drew from the multiplicity of his gifts; his religious writings are rigorous because of his scientific training; and his love of the concrete emerges no less from the stream of quotations in the Provinciales than from his determination to reject the vigorous method of attack that he had used so effectively in his Apologie.
Jean Orcibal Lucien Jerphagnon The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica