The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

by Todd Rose

Scholars and thinkers in every field hailed Quetelet as a genius for uncovering the hidden laws governing society. Florence Nightingale adopted his ideas in nursing, declaring that the Average Man was “God’s Will.” Karl Marx adopted Quetelet’s ideas to develop his economic theory of Communism, announcing that the Average Man proved the existence of historical determinism. The physicist James Maxwell was inspired by Quetelet’s mathematics to formulate the classical theory of gas mechanics. The physician John Snow used Quetelet’s ideas to fight cholera in London, marking the start of the field of public health. Wilhelm Wundt, the father of experimental psychology, read Quetelet and proclaimed, “It can be stated without exaggeration that more psychology can be learned from statistical averages than from all philosophers, except Aristotle.”33

When averages became normal… a new age of average was founded by this man.