Governments adopted Quetelet’s social physics as a basis for understanding their citizens and crafting social policy. His ideas helped focus political attention on the middle class, since they were perceived to be closest to a nation’s average citizen and, according to Queteletian reasoning, the truest type of Belgian, Frenchman, Englishman, Dutchman, or Prussian. In 1846, Quetelet organized the first census for the Belgian government, which became the gold standard for all modern censuses; Quetelet even consulted with James A. Garfield, then a member of the U.S. Congress, about ways to
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