#149 Blaise Pascal: Philosopher, Mathematician, Genius - Graham Tomlin
3/25/20261 hr 34 min
Get Huel today with this exclusive offer for New Customers of 15% OFF with code alexoconnor at https://huel.com/alexoconnor (Minimum $50 purchase).For early, ad-free access to videos, and to support the channel, subscribe to my Substack.Graham Tomlin is a British theologian, author and former Church of England bishop.LINKS:Get Graham's book, Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern WorldGraham's organisation, Seen and Unseen TIMESTAMPS:00:00 - Can Blaise Pascal Be Categorised?03:05 - Who Was Blaise Pascal?11:12 - Pascal’s First Conversion17:19 - Pascal’s “Night of Fire”21:59 - Did Pascal Reject Reason?31:45 - Pascal’s War With Desca...
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First 90 secondsAlex O'Connor· Host0:00
Graham Tomlin, welcome to the show.
Graham Tomlin· Guest0:01
Alex, nice to be here.
Alex O'Connor· Host0:03
You know, yesterday I decided I wanted to have a physical copy of this book- Oh, yeah ... your biography, your book on Blaise Pascal. And so I went to a bookshop to find this.
Graham Tomlin· Guest0:13
Yeah.
Alex O'Connor· Host0:14
And I walked into a Waterstones, which for Americans is like a Barnes & Noble, and I looked in the biography section and I couldn't find it. So I asked them about it, and they said, "Oh, maybe you should go and check philosophy."
Graham Tomlin· Guest0:25
Hmm.
Alex O'Connor· Host0:25
I said, "Okay." So I went and had a look, and guy up there couldn't find it either. So we thought, well, I j- I thought, I'll check theology. Maybe it's, maybe it's in there. And I had a look, and I couldn't find it. I knew it was in stock. They sent me up the road to a different store.
Graham Tomlin· Guest0:38
Yeah.
Alex O'Connor· Host0:38
And I went in there, and I had a look again, and they looked on their computer and said, "You know, the, the last we saw of this book, it was in the astronomy section."
Graham Tomlin· Guest0:45
Astronomy?
Alex O'Connor· Host0:45
I said, "What's it doing..." Okay, I was like, fine. So I went and had a look, and I couldn't find it. And then the, the helpful woman behind the desk ran around the shop and finally found it in the science section of the bookshop. And as all of this was happening, I began to realize that this is something of a testament- Hmm ... to the inability of people- Yeah ... to categorize- Yeah ... and define a man like Blaise Pascal.
Graham Tomlin· Guest1:06
Yeah.
Alex O'Connor· Host1:07
So if that, uh, bookshop were to- Yeah ... phone you up and say, being something of an expert on the guy- Yeah ... how would you categorize a man like Blaise Pascal? What would you say to them?
Graham Tomlin· Guest1:18
Yeah. Fascinating. I'm sorry the book was so elusive- [laughs] ... Alex, but, um- We got it.
Alex O'Connor· Host1:22
We got it eventually.
Graham Tomlin· Guest1:22
We got it in the end. Well done. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, that is, uh, exactly right. It's a very, he's a very difficult person to pin down in all kinds of different