Article ID: CBB001214154

“Principles of Mechanics That Are Susceptible of Application to Society”: An Unpublished Notebook of Adolphe Quetelet at the Root of His Social Physics (2014)

unapi

Aubin, David (Author)


Historia Mathematica
Volume: 41, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 204-223

Founder of the Brussels Observatory, Adolphe Quetelet (1796--1874) is especially well known for his theory of the average man. Like the average position of a star obtained through a large quantity of observed data, the average man was, according to Quetelet, subject to fixed causal laws. Published in 1835, his book On Man: Essay of Social Physics is one of the founding works of sociology and mathematical statistics. The sources of the analogy between astronomy and social physics have been debated by historians. To shed light on this question and the conditions of application of mathematics in the 19th century, we publish for the first time a manuscript that is kept in Quetelet's papers at the Royal Academy of Belgium, and give an English translation of it.

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Authors & Contributors
Fontaine, Philippe
Del Centina, Andrea
Backhouse, Roger E.
Kolb, Margaret
Tafreshi, Donna
Santo Tessaroli
Concepts
Mathematics
Manuscripts
Sociology
Political science
Psychology
Probability and statistics
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Early modern
Medieval
21st century
Places
United States
Brussels (Belgium)
Florence (Italy)
North Africa
Italy
Germany
Institutions
Statistical Society of London
Royal Statistical Society
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