Sussmilch

Sussmilch, Johann Peter (Johann Peter Sussmilch, 1707-67), an outstanding German statistician and demographer. He received his education at universities in Halle and Jena (studying law, medicine, and theology); from 1743 he was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Sussmilch occupies a prominent place in the history of statistics, being one of the founders of the scientific statistics of the population; he led statistics onto the path of precise numerical investigation and the discovery of regularities in the phenomena of social life in general and of physical life of society in particular. Sussmilch stands on the border between the old metaphysical and the new positive science, embodying the transition from theological and teleological conceptions to the positive direction of philosophical thought. On the one hand, his works from the point of view of general ideology bear a specifically tendentious character, reflected in the very title of his main work: "Betrachtungen iiber die gottliche Ord-nung in den Verunderungen des menschli-chen Geschlechts" (Berlin, 1741); on the other hand, he skillfully, objectively, and methodologically correctly developed the scant statistical materials available to him, striving for the most precise determination of quantitative relations, proceeded by a strictly logical path, and masterfully constructed inductive conclusions, guided by the law of large numbers, which he clearly recognized. On the basis of collected materials from various countries of church metric records on marriages, births, and deaths, Sussmilch was one of the first to discern in these phenomena a number of regularities and laws, which constitute at present a solid heritage of demographic science, in relation to the influence of economic conditions on nuptiality, the dependence of mortality on occupation, conditions of urban and rural life, in relation to the increase and fertility of the population, the sex composition of the born, etc.