Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics

Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics by Baker, Keith M.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780226035321.

From the preface: This is neither a new biography of Condorcet nor an attempt to analyze exhaustively all aspects of his thinking. In the following pages I have concentrated on a single theme in his thought-albeit, I think, the central one-his conception of social science. I have tried to analyze historically the nature and development of this conception as it took shape in the general context of Enlightenment thought and the particular social and political milieu that was eighteenth-century France. My subtitle, From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics, is therefore meant to suggest both the particular course of Condorcets intellectual development and a more general evolution of ideas within the Enlightenment to which he contributed.