Blaise Pascal and the Night of Fire

Blaise Pascal is a personal hero of mine. Part one, like me he was a man of mystical orientation. Part two, he was a polymath, someone who dipped his hands into many pies. Part three, he is in fact one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived.

Pascal was perhaps 18 when he had a massive and over-whelming experience of mystical reality. He referred to the incident in his journals as, "the night of fire." He also had a special coat tailored and he embossed in expensive thread on the inside, "the night of fire." He is a man I admire. He was a believer, but very unusual as a believer, and yet - I think that I am a man of a night of fire just as he was, and I don't apologize for it very much.

What people think life is, either pure science or pure religion, is exactly what it isn't. To me, all of this hypermath is less important than what is mysterious about life. We don't study what is mysterious about life either because it doesn't even exist, or because religion forbids such study. Mr. Pascal had the same complaints, and felt the same way about all of his work in, "hard science." As amazing as it all may be, it was that night of fire - that was life - that was reality.

Now here is an interesting little puzzle for those without a night of fire. It is a geometry proof dealing with midpoints. Get this, and again - I have no idea what the world knows and what it doesn't. I have no one to discuss these things with, and I don't know who you are. Yet this is interesting. I wish I had some way of making a diagram, but here goes.

1. Assume a line segment that ends in points A and B.
2. Assume a midpoint on line segment AB, which is point C.
3. If AC + x = BC + x, then C is always a midpoint of line segment AB.

Now get this one. Just hang in there.

Assume x to be the length of AC and y to be the length of BC and c to be your additive constant, where AB is a line segment with a midpoint at C.

Eqn: [(x + y) - c]^3 - [(x + y) - c] = x + c, and [(x + y) - c]^3 - [(x + y) - c] = y +c, in a case so defined.

So what I'm saying is that in a case where we have a midpoint, and where we add equal sums to either side of the line segments from the midpoint, then we can extrapolate a total equality in such a case to infinitely vast geometries. There is a a way to simpify this problem further, but I haven't probed at this one a great deal. But there you have it.

Understand, I do not hate the world. I do care about people a great deal. Further, a madman calls all others mad. Maybe. But you people seem so silly to me! You fly tons of steel through the air and build global networks with your hard sciences, but a "night of fire," is for a short-bus rider, and strange spiritual beliefs cause persecution from both the rational and the religious.

A guy with my talent has never met a real mathematician in person. I just, "fuhgeddaboutit." Anyway, I'm going to go off to read some novel or something or other to wind down for a piece, and then I will need some sleep.