In ancient Greece, the Atheinians had the idea that the many can be more able and wiser then the one. They in many aspects of their political life, they installed system of goverment that relied on decision by large publics. Thy have a consule 500 consulers (the Boule) and an a weekly assmbly more then 6000 citizens. and courts with 201 to 1501 jouries. As Aristotle put it, the many are beter the the one:
- "the many, who are not as individuals excellent men, nevertheless can, when they have
- come together, be better than the few best people, not individually but collectively,
- just as feasts to which many contribute are better than feasts provided at one person’s
- expense"[1].
The notion of the wisdom of the multitude was lost, and then redescoverd by Francis Galton[2]. Galton accidently discovered this property, when he participated in a fair, in which the crowed was asked to estimate the wight of an ox. About 800 tickets were issued and after the end of the game, Galton had taken these tickets, and caculated the mean of the estimations. he found out the the mean of all estimations was very close to the real wight of the ox. The ox wighted 1207 lb (547.48 kg), where as the mean was 1198 lbs (543.40kg).
References
- ↑ Politics III, 11, 1281a41–1281b2 (1998): 83
- ↑ Galton, F. (1907). Vox Populi. Nature, 75(1949), 450–451. doi:10.1038/075450a0