"Maxwell probably first encountered Quetelet in an article by... John Herschel... (...familiar with Quetelet as a fellow astronomer). Later, in 1857, Maxwell read a newly published book by... Henry Thomas Buckle. Buckle, himself clearly influenced by Quetelet, believed that science could discover the "laws of the human mind" and that human actions are a part of "one vast system of universal order." ...Though Maxwell found Buckle's book "bumptious," he recognized it as a source of original ideas, and the statistical reasoning Buckle applied to society seemed just the thing... needed to deal with molecular motion."