Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SOPHY (Philosophy of Social Physics)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-10-02 bis 2025-10-01
SOPHY - Philosophy of Social Physics was designed to achieve three main Research and Innovation Objectives (RIOs). The first RIO concerned the definition of “social physics” in the nineteenth century in relation to the birth of sociology, by assessing the role played by the physical sciences, astronomy, and statistics in shaping the social sciences in particular in Adolphe Quetelet, Henri Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte. The second one aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of the transformation of philosophical and political concepts within this epistemic horizon, and the third one consisted in an opening toward contemporary “social physics,” which involves the use of big data in the governance and organisation of social phenomena.
To achieve the project’s research and innovation objectives, I first analysed the formulation and uses of the lemma “social physics.” I mapped references to treatises and authors in astronomy, celestial mechanics, and physics in the works of Saint-Simon, Quetelet, and Comte, and examined the roles of scientific discourse and objectivity at the intersection of sociology and positivism. Particular attention was paid to the distinct theoretical functions attributed to physics, statistics, and astronomy by each of the three authors as models for the social sciences. In this context, I focused on the mathematisation of social phenomena, highlighting the significant differences between Quetelet, on the one hand, and Saint-Simon and Comte, on the other. I also analysed the foundational role attributed by Saint-Simon to modern science—especially to Bacon, Newton, and Descartes—together with his critiques of Laplace. Finally, I examined the different uses and conceptions of statistics as a means of establishing social science and defining social phenomena across the three authors, emphasising the role of the ideal of a harmonious reorganisation of post-revolutionary society. This body of work was carried out through the combined analysis of primary sources and an exhaustive review of the secondary scholarly literature, particularly in the fields of the history of quantification, historical epistemology, and the history of sociology, science, and scientific knowledge.
I then focused on the textual uses of concepts drawn from physics and astronomy in the works of Saint-Simon, Quetelet, and Comte, analysing them as key elements in the construction of their respective conceptions of the State, society, individuals, and social norms. I examined their conceptualisations of government and the figure of the legislator, and defined the role attributed to the State by each author. This analysis was situated within the broader historical and political context of post-revolutionary France, the Restoration, and Belgium, with particular attention to the social and political effects of the Industrial Revolution. For this work package, the secondary literature mobilised was primarily historical-philosophical and political-philosophical, as well as scholarship in economic and social history. I placed particular emphasis on the problematic naturalisation of the philosophy of history in Saint-Simon’s thought, as well as on the roles of administrative conceptuality and industrialism in nineteenth-century projects for the scientific reorganisation of Europe. This approach required a deeper engagement with the intellectual and philosophical context of the period, including targeted analyses of authors such as Madame de Staël, Condorcet, Benjamin Constant, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Chateaubriand. Finally, I examined the transformations of “social physics” from the nineteenth century to the present, analysing contemporary uses of the lemma together with their conceptual and political implications.
I then focused on the textual uses of concepts drawn from physics and astronomy in the works of Saint-Simon, Quetelet, and Comte, analysing them as key elements in the construction of their respective conceptions of the State, society, individuals, and social norms. I examined their conceptualisations of government and the figure of the legislator, and defined the role attributed to the State by each author. This analysis was situated within the broader historical and political context of post-revolutionary France, the Restoration, and Belgium, with particular attention to the social and political effects of the Industrial Revolution. For this work package, the secondary literature mobilised was primarily historical-philosophical and political-philosophical, as well as scholarship in economic and social history. I placed particular emphasis on the problematic naturalisation of the philosophy of history in Saint-Simon’s thought, as well as on the roles of administrative conceptuality and industrialism in nineteenth-century projects for the scientific reorganisation of Europe. This approach required a deeper engagement with the intellectual and philosophical context of the period, including targeted analyses of authors such as Madame de Staël, Condorcet, Benjamin Constant, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Chateaubriand. Finally, I examined the transformations of “social physics” from the nineteenth century to the present, analysing contemporary uses of the lemma together with their conceptual and political implications.
SOPHY provided a new and more precise understanding of the nineteenth-century uses, meanings, and transformations of the notion of “Social Physics”, as the research clarified the plurality of nineteenth-century “social physics” related perspectives and corrected the assumption of a unified paradigm. This led to a more nuanced and historically grounded understanding of how Saint-Simon, Quetelet, and Comte mobilised physics, astronomy, physiology, statistics, and administrative rationality to conceptualise administration, the State, the functioning of society, social order and harmony, and the foundations of political science, and enabled an extensive examination of the role played by the principle of gravitational attraction in Saint-Simon’s writings. Furthermore, the development of a new interpretative perspective on Saint-Simon’s thought, particularly the analysis of his naturalisation of history combined with the notions of eu-chronia and u-chronia, proved to be especially productive in clarifying his attempt to construct a renewed scientific knowledge of politics and society. Moreover, SOPHY demonstrated that contemporary understandings of “social physics” share far more with Quetelet's statistical approach than with Comte’s interpretative and historical sociology.