Excerpt from Term Paper:

...... However, Pascal suddenly abandoned mathematics in 1647, after being advised to seek diversions from study and attempted for a time to live in Paris in a deliberately frivolous manner, because of his health (Blaise Pascal, Island of Freedom, 2008). Pascals interest in probability theory has been attributed to his interest in calculating the odds involved in the various gambling games he played during this period (Blaise Pascal, Island of Freedom, 2008). However, Pascals account in his Penses is different. He says wished to contemplate the greatness and the misery of man in a purely religious fashion which was why he abandoned mathematics in his youth (Ball 1908)
Pascal only took up mathematics again in 1653, while administering his fathers estate. It was also around this period of his life that he invented the arithmetical triangle, and together with Fermat created the calculus of probabilities. He also experienced a religious conversion. He was meditating marriage when an accident again turned the current of his thoughts to a religious life. He was driving a four-in-hand on November 23, 1654, when the horses ran away; the two leaders dashed over the parapet of the bridge at Neuilly, and Pascal was saved only

Need this essay? If it's not quite what you're looking for there are over 50,000 more to search from, so you can find the term paper or essay that meets your needs.