Nature’s Deterioration: Pascal’s Experiments with the Vacuum Revisited

Abstract

In the context of a depressing assessment of Earth’s future environment, this essay revisits an old controversy about the existence of the vacuum in nature. In particular, it seeks to explore the connection between Blaise Pascal’s (1623–62) contributions to physics and his apologist text, the Pensées (1658–62).1 While in Pascal’s experiments with the vacuum (1647–51), he developed epistemological positions regarding the possibility of science to know nature; in the Pensées, he developed his thinking about faith, the human condition, and the self. Whether it was physics that lent its tools to questions of a humanist tenor, or the latter that first shaped Pascal’s scientific outlook, I propose to examine the importance of Pascal’s experiments with the vacuum in light of his apologist efforts. Pascal developed a view of the human condition modeled on the existence of the vacuum in nature, which he sought to prove in the realm of physics. He thus established a parallel between the emptiness in nature and the emptiness within the human. For Pascal, the human stands apart from God’s created world. In the Pensées, when Pascal develops his theory about the human condition, he speaks of the difference between nonhuman creatures and humans. In these instances, nature primarily means the world of nonhuman species. However, in his laboratory, nature primarily means the world of matter. The human is separated both from animals and matter. Yet, original sin has created a lack in the human and nonhuman world alike, which constitutes the link between these worlds. The existence of the vacuum is a consequence of original sin, just as flawed animal nature relentlessly reminds humanity of Adam’s sin.