Condorcet
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARIE JEAN ANTOINE NICOLAS DE CARI- TAT, MARQUIS DE, a French writer; born near St. Quentin, Sept. 17, 1743. At the age of 21 he presented to the Academy of Sciences an "Essay on the Integral Calculus," and in 1767 his "Memoir of the Problem of Three Points" appeared. The merit of his work gained for him in 1769 a seat in the Academy of Sciences, of which, after the publication of his "Eulogy on the Academicians having died before 1699" (1773), he was appointed perpetual secretary (1777). In 1777 his "Theory of Comets" gained the prize offered by the Academy of Berlin; he enriched the "Transactions" of many learned societies; and took an active part in the "Cyclopedia." During the troubles of the first French Revolution his sympathies were strongly engaged on the side of the people. By the city of Paris he was elected deputy to the legislative assembly, of which he was soon appointed secretary, and in February, 1792, president. On the trial of Louis he was in favor of the severest sentence not capital. The fall of the Girondist party, May 31, 1793, prevented the constitution which Condorcet had drawn up from being accepted, and as he freely criticized the constitution which took its place, he was CONDOR denounced as being an accomplice of Brissot. He was forced to hide himself for 8 months, during which he wrote his "Sketch of an Historic Tableau of the Progress of the Human Mind." Fearing that Madame Verney, who sheltered him, would be punished for it, he fled Paris, was captured and imprisoned, and died March 28, 1794, probably of poison, selfadministered. (kon-dot-yā'rē), a CONDOTTIERI class of mercenary adventurers in the 14th and 15th centuries, who commanded military bands, amounting to armies, on their own account, and sold their services for temporary engagements to sovereign princes and states. They took no interest in national contests, except to receive pecuniary advantages, the wars between them became a sort of bloodless contests, in which the only object of each party was to take as many prisoners as possible for the sake of the ransom. Only one Condottieri attained to high rank and independent power; this was Francesco Sforza, originally a peasant, who in 1451 made himself Duke of Milan, and transmitted that sovereignty to his descendants.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 remembered Condorcet chiefly as a mathematician of comets and integral calculus and as a Revolutionary politician, and gave only his "Sketch of an Historic Tableau of the Progress of the Human Mind" as the work of lasting note. What has since made his name a household word among economists and political scientists is a book Collier's does not mention at all: the Essai of 1785 on the probability of majority decisions, whose "voting paradox" (a majority can prefer A to B, B to C and C to A) and jury theorem became foundations of modern social choice theory after Duncan Black and Kenneth Arrow took them up in the 1950s. Ballot systems that elect the candidate who beats every rival head to head are now simply called Condorcet methods. His reputation as an early advocate of women's suffrage and of the abolition of slavery has also risen sharply, and in 1989, at the Revolution's bicentenary, France honoured him in the Panthis remains having been lost, the coffin was empty.
Written for this edition, 2026.