Posted by Craig Miller on January 26, 19102 at 02:04:55:

In Reply to: pascal's penses posted by Julia on February 07, 19100 at 02:48:19:

: i was wondering what are the major themes of pascal's penses and how to describe them.

"Penses" is French for "ideas", and in many ways, represents nothing more than Pascal's random ideas.

The book has no structure per se, as published today. Or rather, the structure it takes on is a subjective interpretation of the edition;s editors rather than a structure imposed by Pascal himself. It's not a linear work, but organically interconnected. Publishers force it into a linear structure because that's the only format for publishing a book.

Pascal's work was a series of brainstorm sessions that he later hoped to organize into something cohesive. Unforuntately he ped away before the work could be organized and completed. Publiscations today are merely a list of his notes. Editors attempt to organize it, bur according to their own interpretations.

Rumor has it that Pascal had each of his penses written are scraps of paper that he had strung up on the ceiling of his study, with each string linking the ideas in a spider web of interconnected ideas. You'll notice attempts are representing alternative "paths" through his penses. This is reflected in the better published works by the fact that each pense is numbered, and the margins offer alternative penses that the reader can jump to as an alternative to the one that might come next in the linear book.

All of this is so much better represented by the hypertext / linkable / surfable world that the internet now provides. Penses was never meant to be a book. It was meant to be a website - long before there ever was such a thing.

I know I didn't answer your question exactly, but I have given you what I think is the single most powerful theme in Pascal's Penses: that a work of linear literature is fundametally more limited than a multidimensional work that better mirrors the interworkings of the human mind.

-Craig

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