3. The glorification of averages

Statistics was originally invented by astronomers in the 16th century, and in 1801, German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss developed a formula on which he based a bell curve shaped graph, which became known as the “error curve,” where errors were understood as deviations from the norm. This paved the way for the use of statistical analyses of normality in other fields and associated normality with correctness and abnormality with error. Deviation from the norm was not seen as a good thing. During the French Revolution, this concept of statistical normality was first applied to medicine. The revolution aimed to free humanity from religious dogma and the feudal system, which created a new system where everything was quantified and standardized without any of that woo woo spiritual sh*t. (Honestly sometimes I think we should bring back the woo) These conditions led to the creation of the metric system, the standardization of weights, map making surveys, and more things that were purported to be universal and objective.

Also, many people perished or were injured or executed during the revolution, which was much longer, more brutal, and bloodier than any of the Russian Revolutions, I’m just saying, and because of this, physicians in Paris were able to experiment with applying new statistical ideas to patients, bodies, and records.

It was in this context that Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet became the first to propose the concept of human normality as a science, and his work and influence still impact our lives today unfortunately. He was a mathematician, musician, and astronomer, so he was familiar with statistical normality.

During the revolution, his observatory was occupied and used as an armory, which disrupted his work and ultimately leading him to find ways to apply statistics to humans rather than to celestial bodies. Quetelet sought to to quantify and statistically analyze pretty much everything he could about humans and compare those metrics to the larger population. According to Quetelet, the average man was the ideal person, basically the pinnacle of perfection, and anything outside the norm was a monstrosity and a mistake of nature. His viewpoint cemented the idea that being normal or average is good and thus moral and aspirational.

Quetelet’s viewpoint was very convenient for the bourgeois ruling class, as it provided justification for bourgeois hegemony by glorifying the average, moderation, and the middle way of life. It’s good to be in the middle! You should be happy to have a moderate life! The bourgeoisie are doing you a favor by being at the top! Due to Quetelet’s influence, people started to be ranked based on their mental abilities, and this ranking was framed as a timeless natural order rather than a new development arising from the material conditions of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. Which is what it was. The idea of normality effectively justified and reified the various hierarchies that arose under capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism and allowed cognitively abled people to establish a monopoly on the means of production. Intelligence became grounded in statistics rather than ancient wisdom, thus categorizing middle-class, cognitively-abled white people as closer to an idealized “normal,” especially compared to disabled people, working-class people, and Black and Brown colonized subjects. Being subnormal became increasingly stigmatized and feared.

Quetelet’s influence also led to the emergence of various fields emerged that attempted to apply statistical methods to the brain and mind in order to reify capitalist property relations, racial nationalism, and the hierarchies of ability, social class, gender, and race. These fields included phrenology, psychiatry, psychology, and psychometrics, all rooted in a Cartesian understanding of the body as a working or broken machine.

Quetelet also inspired Francis Galton, known as the father of eugenics. Galton was obsessed with the concepts of genius and heredity and aimed to study them scientifically. He was also inspired by his cousin Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, believing that since natural selection occurs due to random mutations in the environment that allow organisms to adapt to their environment over time, that means that individuals could be more or less fit than other individuals, which could be framed as them being more evolved or better adapted. His 1869 book Hereditary Genius combined Darwin’s theory with Quetelet’s statistical methods. He compared heredity among multiple family trees, individuals, and races, judging them in terms of “eminence” and created a ranking system that placed white upper-class Europeans and Ancient Greeks at the top and Black Africans and Indigenous Australians at the bottom. He didn’t even comment on women because according to him, women were unlikely to be geniuses.

Despite receiving criticism about the fact that he ascribed “eminence” to average men who were actually helped along by random incidental advantages, he continued his work and created multiple early forms of psychometric and biometric tests, including intelligence tests, and developed numerous devices for testing abilities like reaction times.

If you hate standardized testing, blame Galton! Because I'm sure he had something to do with those too. Honestly standardized tests don't even test what they're supposed to test, they just test how good you are at taking a standardized test. Which you know, some people are, and that's fine, and some people are not, and that's also fine, who cares?