SOURCE: Baker, K. M. “Scientism, Elitism, and Liberalism: The Case of Condorcet.” In Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century: Transactions of the Second International Congress on the Enlightenment, edited by Theodore Besterman, pp. 129-65. Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1967.

In the following essay, Baker considers Condorcet's contribution to the development of the social sciences.

If we are to believe La Harpe, Condorcet's reception speech at the Académie française in 1782 was not a striking success. ‘Il roule sur l'utilité des sciences et de l'esprit philosophique, sujet usé que le récipiendaire n'a pas rajeuni’, announced the Correspondance littéraire. ‘C'est une suite de lieux communs débités dans un style froidement grave, souvent abstrait, pénible, obscur, denué de mouvement, de grâce et d'intérêt.’¹ Condorcet was naturally of a somewhat different opinion. While perhaps willing to accept La Harpe's evaluation of...