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a new ERA of statistics. First edition of Quetelet's principal work in which he presented his conception of the homme moyen ("average man") as the central value about which measurements of a human trait are grouped according to the normal distribution. "With Quetelet's work of 1835 a new era in statistics began. It presented a new technique of statistics, or, rather, the first technique at all. The material was thoughtfully elaborated, arranged according to certain pre-established principles, and made comparable. There were not very many statistical figures in the book, but each figure reported made sense. For every number, Quetelet tried to find the determining influences, its natural causes, and the perturbations caused by man. The work gave a description of the average man as both a static and dynamic phenomenon. This work was a tremendous achievement, but Quetelet had aimed at a much higher goal: social physics, as the subtitle of the work said; the same title under which, since 1825, Comte had taught what he later called sociology. Terms and analogies borrowed from mechanics played a great part in Quetelet s theoretical explanation. To find the laws that govern the social body, one has to do what one does in physics: to observe a large number of cases and then take averages. Quetelet s average man became a slogan in nineteenth-century discussions on social science" (DSB). "A rare, three-part review in the Athenaeum concluded by remarking: We consider the appearance of these volumes as forming an epoch in the literary history of civilization " (Stigler, p. 170). This work occasionally appears on the market, but we have not been able to locate any copy in original printed wrappers sold at auction. "It was in writings published in the 1830s that Quetelet (1796-1874) established the theoretical foundations of his work in moral statistics or, to use the modern term, sociology. First there was the idea that social phenomena in general are extremely regular and that the empirical regularities can be discovered through the application of statistical techniques. Furthermore, these regularities have causes: Quetelet considered his averages to be "of the order of physical facts," thus establishing the link between physical laws and social laws. But rather than attach a theological interpretation to these regularities as Sussmilch and others had done a century earlier, finding in them evidence of a divine order Quetelet attributed them to social conditions at different times and in different places. This conclusion had two consequences: It gave rise to a large number of ethical problems, casting doubt on man s free will and thus, for example, on individual responsibility for crime; and in practical terms it provided a basis for arguing that meliorative legislation can alter social conditions so as to lower crime rates or rates of suicide. "On the methodological side, two key principles were set forth very early in Quetelet s work. The first states that Causes are proportional to the effects produced by them . This is easy to accept when it comes to man s physical characteristics; it is the assumption that allows us to conclude, for example, that one man is twice as strong as another (the cause) simply because we observe that he can lift an object that is twice as heavy (the effect). Quetelet proposed that a scientific study of man s moral and intellectual qualities is possible only if this principle can be applied to them as well. The second key principle advanced by Quetelet is that large numbers are necessary in order to reach any reliable conclusions an idea that can be traced to the influence of Laplace, Fourier, and Poisson … "Quetelet was greatly concerned that the methods he adopted for studying man in all his aspects be as scientific as those used in any of the physical sciences. His solution to this problem was to develop a methodology that would allow full application of the theory of probabilities. For in striking co.
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