Financial market randomness was modeled as quasi-Newtonian social physics by early theorists.

Evidence

As a follower of the “social physics” of the pioneering statistician Adolphe Quetelet, Regnault sought regularities underlying the market’s apparent randomness. What was from his viewpoint the central regularity could have been derived mathematically from his model, but Regnault seems to have found it empirically (and he certainly tested it empirically). — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 261

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Quetelet’s ‘social physics’ as the intellectual frame in which early financial models were built.
• XREF: connects to: The randomness of price changes was a foundational open problem in finance — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 463; Postmodern society is a pragmatics of heterogeneous language games, not a Newtonian system. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 90

Broader Connections

• The randomness of price changes was a foundational open problem in finance #expands (0.80) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 463
• Postmodern society is a pragmatics of heterogeneous language games, not a Newtonian system. #contradicts (0.72) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 90