In 1853, the director of the Belgium Royal Observatory, Adolphe Quetelet, welcomed delegates from several countries to two consecutive meetings that have acquired considerable reputation as the first international congresses of, respectively, meteorology and statistics. This paper examines the local context where several similar international congresses (on free trade, universal peace, prison reform, public hygiene, etc.) were organized in the same decade. It argues that the new Belgian state developed this new form of international conference in order to bolster its soft power in the Concert of Nations. It also discusses tensions between national interests and global beliefs in the efficiency of science, which arose from these congresses.This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.
...More
Article
Filippo Maria Sposini;
(2020)
At the Borders of the Average Man: Adolphe Quêtelet on Mental, Moral, and Criminal Monstrosities
(/isis/citation/CBB294903530/)
Article
Pich, Santiago;
(2013)
Adolphe Quetelet e a biopolítica como teologia secularizada
(/isis/citation/CBB001420668/)
Article
Aubin, David;
(2014)
“Principles of Mechanics That Are Susceptible of Application to Society”: An Unpublished Notebook of Adolphe Quetelet at the Root of His Social Physics
(/isis/citation/CBB001214154/)
Article
Caponi, Sandra;
(2013)
Quetelet, el hombre medio y el saber médico
(/isis/citation/CBB001420667/)
Article
Donna Tafreshi;
(2022)
Adolphe Quetelet and the legacy of the “average man” in psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB333634470/)
Article
Kevin Donnelly;
(2017)
Redeeming Belgian Science: Periodic Phenomena and Global Physics in Brussels, 1825-1870
(/isis/citation/CBB348785063/)
Thesis
Donnelly, Kevin;
(2011)
Quetelet's Average Men: Bureaucratic Science in Belgium at the End of Enlightenment 1796--1874
(/isis/citation/CBB001562729/)
Book
Aitor Anduaga;
(2019)
Politics, Statistics and Weather Forecasting, 1840-1910: Taming the Weather
(/isis/citation/CBB424417052/)
Book
Crook, Tom;
O'Hara, Glen;
(2011)
Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numbers and the People in Modern Britain, c. 1800--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001033382/)
Chapter
Bracke, Nele;
(2010)
For State and Society? The Production of Official Statistics in 19th-Century Belgium
(/isis/citation/CBB001031933/)
Article
Stamhuis, Ida H.;
(2007)
A Nineteenth-Century Statistical Society that Abandoned Statistics
(/isis/citation/CBB000773207/)
Article
Hautcœur, Pierre-Cyrille;
(2008)
Produire des statistiques: pour quoi faire? L'échec de la statistique des faillites en France au XIXe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000931379/)
Chapter
Schneider, Michael C.;
(2010)
Das Preussische Statistische Bureau in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts als Organisation der Wissensproduktion
(/isis/citation/CBB001031934/)
Article
Rowse, Tim;
Shellam, Tiffany;
(2013)
The Colonial Emergence of a Statistical Imaginary
(/isis/citation/CBB001201830/)
Book
Manias, Chris;
(2013)
Race, Science, and the Nation: Reconstructing the Ancient Past in Britain, France and Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001452038/)
Book
Sawai, Minoru;
(2012)
Kindai Nihon no kenkyu kaihatsu taisei
(/isis/citation/CBB001451270/)
Article
Zeke Baker;
(2018)
Meteorological Frontiers: Climate Knowledge, the West, and US Statecraft, 1800–50
(/isis/citation/CBB214732593/)
Thesis
Zeke Baker;
(2015)
Meteorological Government: A Political Genealogy of Climate Knowledge in the United States, 1780-2018
(/isis/citation/CBB793497463/)
Article
Scholliers, Peter;
Van den Eeckhout, Patricia;
(2010-11)
Hearing the Consumer? The Laboratory, the Public, and the Construction of Food Safety in Brussels (1840s--1910s)
(/isis/citation/CBB001231793/)
Article
Diamond, Marion;
Stone, Mervyn;
(1981)
Nightingale on Quetelet
(/isis/citation/CBB000009161/)
Be the first to comment!