CONDORCET, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de.

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Vie de Monsieur Turgot. One of four printings of 1786, Gerits's edition D, with no Avis de l'éditeur and no errata, and the misprints corrected: "Contrary to what is suggested by the title, this book was not a biography but rather an exposé of Turgot's educational, political, and economic ideas" (Gerits).This work, together with Dupont de Nemours's biography, is the chief contemporary account of the renowned financial reformer and friend of the physiocrats. It contains in a footnote Condorcet's early attempt to apply mathematics to economics. On pp. 178-184 he discusses the various mathematical ways "in which indirect taxation could be replaced by direct taxation and the effects of such a change" (Theocharis, Early developments in mathematical economics, p. 65).Condorcet (1743-1794) was secretary to the Académie and was a prolific author. Although more celebrated for his studies in philosophy, literature and politics, "his mathematical treatment of probabilities, and his discussion of differential equations and finite differences, show an ability which might have put him in the first rank had he concentrated his attention on mathematics" (W.W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, p. 388).

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