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Article ID: CBB901407421

In Search of Lost Causes: Walter Scott and Adolphe Quetelet's Revolutions (2019)

Kolb, Margaret (Author)

Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Volume: 27
Issue: 1
Pages: 59-85

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/714472

DOI: 10.1353/con.2019.0002

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Probability and statistics Science and literature Mathematics 19th century Condorcet, Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Laplace, Pierre Simon Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe Jacques Scott, Walter

Nineteenth-century mathematicians and novelists shared a pressing question: how might the events preceding revolution be related? This essay outlines a timeline of this question from the novels of Walter Scott to the mathematical projects of Adolphe Quetelet. Drawing on mathematical history, I show how Pierre Simon Laplace and Nicolas Condorcet preceded Quetelet in searching for a metaphor adequate to the application of probability mathematics to history. I argue that Scott's bridge between private and public spheres—a wavering hero—circulated exactly such a metaphor, priming the public imagination for Quetelet's homme moyen (average man), the statistical figure enabling mathematical analysis of social data. Comparing mathematical representational strategies with those of Walter Scott's historical novels, I argue that while many mathematicians saw probability logic as the exclusive language for encoding uncertainty, Scott reads probability logic as one predictive language among many: historically contingent, subject to change, and unpredictably predictive.

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