Marquis de Condorcet

The Marquis de Condorcet was a French philosopher, mathematician and political reformer of the late Enlightenment. He applied probability theory to voting, showing that majority preferences can run in a circle and that, under certain conditions, a majority verdict grows more reliable as a group grows larger. During the French Revolution he sat in the Legislative Assembly, drafted plans for public education and argued for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. While hiding from arrest he wrote his Sketch, a history of human progress, before dying in prison in 1794.

Key ideas

• History shows indefinite progress in knowledge, and with it progress in morality, equality and happiness.
• If each voter is more likely right than wrong, the majority of a larger group is more likely to be right (Condorcet's jury theorem).
• Majority preferences among three or more options can be cyclical, so 'the will of the majority' may be undefined (Condorcet's paradox).
• Free public education for all, women included, is essential to a republic.
• Women are entitled to the same political rights as men.

Major works

• Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795)
• Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions (1785)
• On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship (1790)

In the Book corner

• Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind 1795 (written 1793–94) · Intermediate
  A sketch of human history as a story of progress, written in 1793–94 while Condorcet was hiding from arrest under the Jacobins,…

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