The magical way of certain knowledge acquiring in Pascal's experience

Abstract

The article interprets Pascal's concept of mathematics from the treatise Of the Geometrical Spirit as a magical way of acquiring true knowledge. The author argues that the initial features that define the magical character of Pascal's mathematics are: (1) the requirement to build the language of geometry on the basis of names corresponding to persons rather than concepts corresponding to objects; (2) the requirement to use a special language for describing names, different from the traditional object language; (3) the understanding of "definition" as the application of names to things. According to the author, the perspective of a name rather than of a concept at the heart of science is explicitly magical because a name is a verbally transformed conscious form of being, embodied into something concrete and aimed at the universal unification of things. This interpretation, on the other hand, assigns to the concept the role of a tool for cognition of names. Understanding a name is a magical path of consciousness through the repeated relating of a concept to a name. Thus, any theorem of geometry will not be seen as a proof, but rather as a partial and situational description of the obviousness of the transcendent.