The Error of Truth: How History and Mathematics Came Together to Form Our Character and Shape Our Worldview by Osterlind Steven J.;

Author:Osterlind, Steven J.; [Osterlind, Steven J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780198831600
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2018-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

From this, he developed a law of deviation in which any measurable event with enough similar measurements (i.e., ones that occur within the same range) would be governed by the same predictable deviation that he saw for the conscripts. He felt he could predict for a population the exact distribution for a large number of cases, and even how many would fall above and below any of his lines of division.

This work influenced Francis Galton greatly, who applied it to intelligence measurements in his seminal Hereditary Genius. In that work, Galton described Quetelet’s system of distribution and imagined he could use it, too. I describe this more fully in Chapter 12.

And, as we see, Quetelet himself followed in the footsteps of his professor, mentor, friend, and primary influence, Laplace. He sought to apply quantification to social contexts and thereby bring it to a broad audience as they participated in everyday society.

He wanted to touch Everyman. While he was only modestly successful in this large effort, he did influence several important people from varying fields: Florence Nightingale, John Maynard Keynes, Francis Galton, Siméon Poisson, and others. Let us look at these influences individually.

Poisson was a mathematician who developed some highly technical papers on physics and invented an important probability distribution. We will meet him in Chapter 11.

Florence Nightingale, as is widely known, was a heroine of the Crimean War and, through her humanitarian work, she virtually invented the nursing profession. What is not as well known about her, however, is her interest in statistics and its application to social problems. She wrote scientific papers using probability to address such issues. Obviously, writing scientific papers was quite unusual for a woman at the time. She credited her activism to following Quetelet’s notions on social physics, and we know that they corresponded.

Readers probably recognize that the English economist John Maynard Keynes is one of the most prominent economists of all time. Keynes freely acknowledged that his ideas on social physics were heavily influenced by Quetelet, particularly his acceptance of “constant causes” explanations for societal phenomenon. In 1921, Keynes wrote an important essay about social physics, titling it “The Application of Probability to Conduct” (reprinted in Newman 1956). In it, he sounds exactly like Quetelet. He says, “We might put it, therefore, that the probable is the hypothesis on which it is rational for us to act” (Keynes 1956, 1360). Indeed, upon reading the essay, one imagines that it could have easily been penned by Quetelet himself.

Keynes applied probability to problems in economics in his seminal work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Keynes (1936) 1973). It brought about the “Keynesian Revolution,” attracting a worldwide following. He posited ideas on how to manage economies, particularly in times of severe unemployment, such as existed during the Depression, the time during which he wrote. The most lasting point of Keynesian economics is his theory on supply and demand. He said “supply creates its own demand” (Keynes (1936) 1973, 21), a line that started a generations-long discussion about its effects in practice.

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