Should numbers or figures take precedence? Far from being merely a technical debate among mathematicians, this question has major implications for Blaise Pascal, the mathematician and mystic, and his relationship with God.
*"The year 1955 marked a crucial turning point in my mathematical work: the transition from 'analysis' to 'geometry.' I still remember the striking impression it made on me (entirely subjective, of course), as though I were leaving behind arid, forbidding steppes and suddenly entering a kind of 'promised land' of luxuriant riches, multiplying without end wherever the hand chooses to alight, whether to gather or to delve. […] The Universe, the World, even the Cosmos, are fundamentally alien and exceedingly remote. They do not truly concern us. It is not toward them that our innermost urge for knowledge draws us. What attracts us is their tangible and immediate Incarnation, the closest and most 'fleshly,' charged with deep resonances and rich in mystery."*
