Condorcet

The Marquis de Condorcet (1743-94) was a founding father of social science. He believed that what he called the moral sciences could be studied by the same exacting methods as the natural sciences, and he developed many of the tools for doing so. Condorcet has had two quite unconnected reputations: as the doomed and foolish Enlightenment scholar, writing about the perfectibility of mankind while in hiding from the Terror that would shortly claim his own life; and as the incomprehensible founder of social choice, whose Essai of 1785 was not understood until the 1950s. This book shows that he was not so foolish, nor so incomprehensible, as even sympathetic treatments have made him sound.