Las razones del corazón como fundamento del conocimiento científico en Blaise Pascal

Abstract

According to classical epistemology, every science is ordered in a hierarchical way, consisting in first and evident principles from which the rest of the propositions, more complex and less general, are demonstrated, following several rules. Pascal sets that geometry shows in the most perfect way the method that must be following in science, because geometry is based only on clear things, evident by natural enlightenment. Nevertheless, the perfect method –consisting in defining every term, and in proving every proposition– exceeds even the geometry. In the things that we cannot know, nature sustaining it in default of reason. Pascal is referring here to the common principles knows by all mankind which are knowledge and intuited by the heart, and that are the foundations of knowledge from particular science.