Word: pascalian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...talk about Jesus Christ because science had pretty well told us that it was impossible to believe in God and the Bible." An increasing number of scientists would now appear to agree with the almost Pascalian argument of Astronomer Robert Jastrow, founder and director of NASA'S Goddard Institute. Since it is impossible to prove whether life on earth was created by the will of some supreme £ creative being, or evolved spontaneously, says Jastrow, the choice either way is "an act of faith." Even among highly secular folk there is a general disposition to assume, as never before, that...
...introduction of this Pascalian connection raises an intriguing question--is McCarthy's inspiration traceable to an Ostrovsky connection, too? In 1971 Erika Ostrovsky published Voyeur, Voyant, a romanticized but keenly intelligent biography of Celine, cast in elegantly spacy prose. In it, she lets fall the word divertissement with McCarthy's meaning but without Pascal's support. Elsewhere she undermines Celine's pretence that he resented public interviews and solicitation of his advice by jibing, "Somehow, he protested too much." When relating how Celine insisted that he did not believe in love, the Frenchman's latest biographer sounds a rather pompous...
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