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Quetelet
Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet FRSF or FRSE (; 22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist who founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences. His name is sometimes spelled with an accent as ''Quételet''. He also founded the science of anthropometry and developed the body mass index (BMI) scale, originally called the Quetelet Index. His work on measuring human characteristic to determine the ideal ''l'homme moyen'' ("the average man"), played a key role in the origins of eugenics. Biography Adolphe was born in Ghent (which, at the time was a part of the new French Republic). He was the son of François-Augustin-Jacques-Henri Quetelet, a Frenchman and Anne Françoise Vandervelde, a Flemish woman. His father was born at Ham, Picardy, and being of a somewhat adventurous spirit, he crossed the English Channel and became both a Briti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Physics
Social physics or sociophysics is a field of science which uses mathematical tools inspired by physics to understand the behavior of human crowds. In a modern commercial use, it can also refer to the analysis of social phenomena with big data. Social physics is closely related to econophysics which uses physics methods to describe economics. History The earliest mentions of a concept of social physics began with the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. In 1636 he traveled to Florence, Italy, and met physicist-astronomer Galileo Galilei, known for his contributions to the study of motion. It was here that Hobbes began to outline the idea of representing the "physical phenomena" of society in terms of the laws of motion. In his treatise ''De Corpore'', Hobbes sought to relate the movement of "material bodies" to the mathematical terms of motion outlined by Galileo and similar scientists of the time period. Although there was no explicit mention of "social physics", the sentiment of exam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
