Adolphe Quetelet, Social Physics and the Average Men of Science, 1796–1874 by Kevin Donnelly

Author:Kevin Donnelly [Kevin Donnelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317316732
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Quetelet may have had very little to offer to a conference of this sort, but he took great care in noting the details, specifically the number of meetings, general lectures and ‘outings’. Particularly attractive was this last activity, where attendees went for long walks in the woods around the city or took guided visits to the scientific academy. Quetelet had no formal role at the conference, but he did have one responsibility: reporting back to Goethe on the reception to his work. Quetelet knew Goethe was concerned about his reputation as a scientist, and the poet had told Quetelet, ‘I am a friend, and I confess that I will be very curious to know what one thinks of these goods [merchandise] and if you give it any esteem … Promise me that you will tell me the truth’.87 Unsurprisingly, in both his account of Goethe and the German trip, Quetelet reported little on the scientific content of the meetings. Aside from describing the form of the meetings themselves and Goethe’s hopes, his only other comment was to mention that he was able to meet the Englishmen Robert Brown and William Whewell, two more prominent men of science with whom he began a lasting correspondence.

This is not to say that the conference was unimportant however, as in later writings Quetelet extolled the virtues of the congrès. In the same 1852 essay where he had lauded academies, Quetelet explained that conferences could assure that researchers got outside of the narrow world of academic life.88 After citing Rousseau as an example of someone who was able to succeed outside of the academies, he admitted, ‘others see in them [academies] a sort of mutual assurance society for scientific success; a system of reciprocal adoration’.89 Additionally, Quetelet complained that the many academy proceedings were ‘open to the public’ and that debates were often influenced by the desire to sway the crowd. This kind of public science had been repudiated, and Quetelet hoped that conferences could allow scientists to gather in a private sphere, away from the need for ostentatious demonstration. Though Quetelet had believed in a strong académie in Belgium, it was only the beginning of his idea for associations. ‘A conference’, Quetelet claimed, ‘will be advantageous in supplementing the insufficiencies of an academy’.90 While ‘their origin had been recent’, Quetelet envisioned a future for large meetings of savants. The small group he found at Heidelberg was only the beginning.

Quetelet returned to Brussels in late October of 1829, likely satisfied with his mission. While the young Belgian writer of a decade before had found the German states to be a ‘curious land’, filled with a dark history and untrammelled nature, the Germany he witnessed on this trip must have seemed more familiar. It looked like his vision for Belgium. The observatories of Altona and Bremen, the academies and institutions of Berlin and the conference in Heidelberg were all examples of the kinds of science for which Quetelet had advocated in Brussels. German science, outside of Goethe and Humboldt, was becoming hierarchical, routine and standardized.

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