"In principle, wrote Quetelet, the courage or criminality of a real person could be established... but it was wholly unnecessary for social physics. Instead, the physicist need only arrange that courageous and criminal acts be recorded throughout society, as the latter already were, and then the average man could be assigned a "penchant for crime" equal to the number of criminal acts committed divided by the population. In this way, a set of discrete acts by distinct individuals was transformed into a continuous magnitude... an attribute of the average man."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
StatisticiansCriminologistsMathematicians from BelgiumAstronomers from BelgiumSociologists from Belgium
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Theodore M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900 (1986)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolphe_Quetelet
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Adolphe Quetelet
Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (or Quételet) (22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. He founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was perpetual secretary of the Royal Academy of Brussels. Quetelet was influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences.
59 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Adolphe Quetelet →
Related Quotes
"The great body of population dynamics, like those of the motion of the celestial bodies, can be solved—and what is mo…"
"This great body (the social body) subsists by virtue of conservative principles, as does everything which has proceed…"
"Little by little his conversation, always instructive and animated, gave a special direction to my tastes, which woul…"
"The more advanced the sciences have become, the more they have tended to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a …"
"We then better understand the weakness of man, and the power of the Supreme: we are struck with the inflexible consta…"
"The Supreme has then not only spread life and movement throughout, and willed that its impress should be preserved, b…"
"The principal artists of the era of the revival of letters, such as Leon Baptista Alberti, Michael Angelo, Leonardo d…"
"It would be an error... to suppose that science makes the artist; yet it lends to him the most powerful assistance. I…"
"Artists have, for the most part, bound themselves down to follow a blind routine. Noble exceptions, however, have pre…"
"It has seemed to me that the theory (calcul) of probabilities ought to serve as the basis for the study of all the sc…"