Physique sociale ou essai sir le developpement des facultes de l'homme. 2 vols. in 1

Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe Jacques (1796-1874). Physique sociale ou essai sur le developpement des facultés de l'homme. 2 vols. in 1. [4], viii, 503; 485pp. Folding plate. Brussels: C. Muquardt; Paris: J.-B. Baillière; St. Petersburg: Jacques Issakoff, 1869. 226 x 155 mm. Later cloth. Minor foxing and toning but very good.

Second and Best Edition of Quetelet's Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés (1835). By the time of this edition, thirty years after the first, Quetelet had developed a much more sophisticated mathematics, and had found normal distribution to be a natural law. The second edition features a long introduction by the English astronomer Sir John Herschel; Quetelet had borrowed many of his statistical concepts from the work of astronomers. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Norman 1770. Stigler, History of Statistics, pp. 161-182.