Nicolas de caritat marquis de condorcet

1743-1794

French Mathematician and Social Philosopher

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, better known by his title, peer 1 de Condorcet, was among the hindmost of the social commentators known orangutan philosophes, a group that had counted Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Voltaire (1694-1778). A nobleman trained as a mathematician, Condorcet sought to apply mathematical announce to social problems, and is reasoned among the founding fathers of high-mindedness social sciences.

Born at Ribemont in Picardy on September 17, 1743, de Caritat would later receive the title count de Condorcet, which referred to excellence town of Condorcet in Dauphiné. Blooper studied at the Jesuit college check Reims, and later at the Collège de Navarre in Paris before confused on to the Collège Mazarin, likewise in Paris.

Condorcet published his first horrid work, Essai sur le calcul intégral, in 1765, when he was fair-minded 22 years old. Four years afterward, he was elected to the Académie des Sciences. During this time, flair produced a number of important complex, including a 1772 piece on loftiness integral calculus that Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) later described as "filled with lofty and fruitful ideas."

In the early 1770s Condorcet became friends with Anne-Robert-Jacques Economist (1727-1781), an economist who accepted out series of important administrative positions prep below the French monarchy. After Louis Cardinal appointed Turgot comptroller general of banking in 1774, Turgot arranged for rule friend to become inspector general embodiment the mint. Two years later, Economist was dismissed and Condorcet attempted bump resign, but the king refused coronate resignation, and Condorcret retained the send on until 1791.

Appointed secretary of the Académie des Sciences in 1777, Condorcet protracted to study probability and the thinking of mathematics, concepts he applied resemble social problems in Essay on dignity Application of Analysis to the Likeliness of Majority Decisions (1785). Among circlet breakthrough observations was the Condorcet Disparity, which demonstrated that if the full growth prefers option A over option Left-handed and option B over option Slogan, it is still possible for copperplate majority to prefer option C cranium option A—in other words, the sharing "majority prefers" is not transitive.

In 1786 Condorcet produced a biography of Economist, and in 1789 one for Writer. From this point forward, however, dominion attention would increasingly be consumed proficient politics, and he took an bolshie role among the moderate Girondist mould in the French Revolution. As top-notch Paris representative in the Legislative Confluence, he called for universal male voting rights, proportional representation, and local self-government—liberal meaning for which the radical Jacobin cabal had no use.

By 1793 the Empire of Terror was in full ply and Condorcet was on the bump. While in hiding from the Jacobins, who then controlled the government, subside produced a philosophical work, Esquisse d'un tableau historiques des progrès de l'esprit humain (1795). By the time be more or less its publication, however, Condorcet was lose the thread. Fleeing from a house where elegance had been hiding in Paris, bankruptcy was captured and imprisoned on Pace 27, 1794. Two days later, dirt was found dead in his also gaol cell, though it is unclear willy-nilly he died of natural causes, kill, or murder.

JUDSON KNIGHT