Oeuvres completes, Blaise Pascal

I finished off the complete works with his 100-page fragment on grace. I was hoping for something more mystical than theological in that document, but it was not to be. I am pleased to have read Pascal, but his scientific texts were a slog. I skipped most of the geometry, I'll admit, although perusing them as I did gave me a better understanding of how he approached his meditations on God. I was thankful some of his scientific work was in Latin, so I didn't have to read those too. I did spend some time thinking over Pascal's conversion, provoked by his niece's lachrymal fistula. How can the fruits be so great when the original provocation, the spontaneous healing of the fistula, was considered wrongly to be a miracle?

I now undertake the first volume of Maurois' complete works.

In Pursuit of Military Excellence and other readings

Since my last post, I've read two issues of The New Yorker, two issues of The New Scientist, Vogue's spring issue, several works of Pascal, and Shimon Naveh's Pursuit of Military Excellence. This last book was published in 1997, and it looks at the operational art. The problem with it, I think, is that he never moves beyond the idea of national schools of strategy into the more theoretical realm, although he may do that in another book. It otherwise treads on some of the same material that I have written about. It is incredibly generously footnoted, and for the first time in my career he refers to works in strategy that I haven't read. I will be returning to Pascal shortly. I am considering starting to read a lot more in French for the next while.