Jakob Bielfeld (1717--1770) and the diffusion of statistical concepts in eighteenth century Europe

DOI10.1016/J.HM.2015.05.001MaRDI QIDQ5962964zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Bernard Ycart

Publication date 25 February 2016

Published in Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.1449

zbMATH Keywords

history of statisticsJakob Bielfeldpolitical arithmetic

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 18th century (01A50) Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies (01A70) History of statistics (62-03)

Abstract: Published between 1760 and 1770, Bielfeld's writings prove that scholars of the time were acquainted with the concepts of both political arithmetic and German statistik, long before they merged into a new discipline at the beginning the following century. It is argued here that these works may have been an important source of diffusion of statistical concepts at the end of the eighteenth century. Bielfeld is now almost completely forgotten, and the reasons for his lack of fame in posterity are examined.

Review text

Bielfeld, a baron of Prussia, included so-called political arithmetic (population, mortality tables, annuities, and the like) among the many topics discussed in his expository volumes of \textit{Institutions politiques} and \textit{Les premiers traits de l'érudition universelle}. The author tries to make a case that although ``Bielfeld's chapter on political arithmetics was one of many contemporaneous texts on the subject, with no particular originality, his works ``may have been an important source of diffusion of statistical concepts. In particular, the present article proposes (but does not offer any supporting evidence) that Euler's papers on political arithmetic ``were probably sparked by his reading of Bielfeld.

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