Music, Math, and the Mathematical Piano: Pascal, 1645

JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post 524

Music is the pleasure of the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. - Gottfried Leibniz

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), physicist and mathematician--rather, mathematician and physicist--and philosopher as well, invented the second mechanical calculator in 1645 (after that of Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635) in 1623).  He had a phenomenal output in many different, difficult, and complex areas, all completed before he died at the improbable age of 39. (His predecessor in invention, Schickard, was dead at 43.)   We see him here, seated in front of his beautiful invention (called the Arithemtique, and the Pacalina), looking to be quite a bit older than his age at invention, which was 23.  He looked pretty content with himself, even though, I think, he didn't care all that much for the machine--at least he didn't care enough about it to perfect it, or to try to make real money on the thing.  But the picture of him here always looked to me as though he was playing an enharmomic harpsichord, or using some sort of musical instrument, or doing something more socially beautiful than the optical doing of arithmetic, though both were exhibitions of tuning the polyphonic sub-mysteries harmonies of nature.  His image seems to wed the millennial Pythagorian creation of the music of the spheres, and Leibniz’ scorn of Newton’s occult-y causes of nature’s phenomena, and of Augustine’s “distraction” of perfect creation—a polychord romance of science and music.

Or, maybe, it was just a guy sitting behind a calculator.