Pascal's Treatise On The Weight Of The Mass Of Air
1240 Words5 Pages
Pascal’s careful observations of liquids and air demonstrates the concept of equilibrium, and its ubiquity in the physical world. In Pascal’s Treatise on the Weight of the Mass of the Air, he claims that ,”The mass of the water of the sea presses...the earth which is beneath it...In the same way, since the mass of the air covers the whole face of the earth, its weight presses… at every point(Pascal 72).” Pascal comfortably transposes his knowledge of fluid into his knowledge of the air, identifying the two as material with weight, mass and density. In much of the same way, Pascal’s writings on the physical world can have meaningful implications for the metaphysical one, particularly in regards to the balancing of power between separate forces. Aristotle had already begun to describe something similar in Nicomachean…show more content… In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle divides the soul of humans into two groups, “ that which grasps a rule or rational principle, and the irrational (Aristotle, VI.1).” There is a clear relationship between physical law and nature, when compared with the rational and irrational. The rational part can be ascribed to the unchanging laws of physics, and the unchanging truth they hold. For the irrational, there is nature, which prohibits humans from living truthfully, but colors existence with a spectrum of feeling and the vibrance. To satisfy nature and truth equally would be to live in balance, and to satisfy the role of human. Despite a long history of social contracts, humanity has yet to transcend nature. On all sides of civilization, the wild encroaches and consumes, leaving even the greatest civilizations to their eventual ruin. It has already been made clear that nature ends where a vacuum begins. In this way, nature and all of its components most of all abhor nothingness, and feed off of