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'''Stefano FRANSCINI'''

b. 23 October 1796 - d. 19 July 1857

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'''Summary.''' Founding father of
Swiss official statistics, Franscini was both politician and scientist.
He was active in the establishment of Switzerland's national identity
and served as Federal Minister of the Interior. He is especially
remembered for his advocacy of statistical information as an inherent
ingredient of the democratic process.

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'''Profile of a man between agora and science'''

Stefano Franscini was born in 1796 in Bodio, a little village of Ticino, the 
Italian-speaking region of
Switzerland. From childhood he manifested an uncommon intelligence and his 
parents decided 
to orient him towards the only educational career accessible at that time to 
children of modest
families: he went to the catholic minor seminary of Pollegio, where he was 
supposed to be prepared
for priesthood. At eighteen he moved to the major seminary of Milan, but 
finally he decided to
abandon theology and turned towards the study of an eclectic variety of 
authors and fields.

Strongly influenced by liberal thinking, Franscini first took an interest in 
educational sciences. He
worked in Italy as a teacher and his first book (1821) was a
school text on Italian grammar which had major success (eigtheen 
editions in Italy and
three in Ticino). Back in Switzerland, he opened and directed, with his wife,
two schools inspired by
English theories on mutual instruction. He then published a revolutionary 
pamphlet, ''Della pubblica
istruzione nel Cantone Ticino'' (1828), in which he denounced the social 
inequalities and pedagogic
lacunas of public schooling, and advocated a radical reform of the 
educational system.

A man of thought and action, Franscini embarked with equal energy on both 
scientific and political
activity. His first work as a statistician, ''Statistica della Svizzera'', 
appeared in 1827; then, in parallel
with his activities as chancellor and member of the government of the canton 
Ticino, he published
''Svizzera Italiana'' (in German in 1835 and in Italian in 1837) and the 
''Nuova Statistica'' in 1847.
Finally, as a member of the first collegial executive of modern Switzerland, 
he published the
''Mat&eacute;riaux pour la statistique de la Conf&eacute;deration Suisse''
(1851-1858), which 
appeared not under
his name but attributed to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, of which he 
was the political head.

Such a statistical work was based on accurate observation of natural, 
economic and social
phenomena. Franscini's portrait of Switzerland was an encyclopedic 
compendium on geography,
topography, climate, fauna, flora, natural resources, demographic 
structures, agriculture, industrial
production, trend, public finances, political institutions, social 
aggregates and cultural behavior. The
amount of information and quality of analysis provided by Franscini appears 
today particularly
impressive if one considers that he worked practically alone, without any 
assistance or grant.
Indeed, in spite of his prominent political role, he never obtained official 
support for his statistical
activity. Thus, 
<blockquote>
"he had to write himself mountains of letters to cantonal 
governments,
municipalities, enterprises and scientific associations, in order to obtain 
data on all branches of
public activities, education, roads, business, finance, agricultural and 
industrial production, taxes,
prices, salaries... And it was on the basis of such a titanic work that he 
succeeded to organize and
carry out the first federal census in 1850... but always alone, without a 
statistical bureau, without a
single employee." (Calgari, 1968)
</blockquote>
In 1855 the government decided for the 
first time to grant the
publication of "federal statistics" with a ridiculous amount of a thousand 
francs - and it was only in
1860, after Franscini's death, that it decided to create a small Federal 
Bureau of Statistics.

Franscini not only lacked recognition of his statistical work from his 
colleagues in government, but
he also had to face the arrogant scorn of the Swiss academia of that time. 
Although his
scientific contribution was noticed abroad (he was corresponding member of 
the French Institute
and of the Belgian Central Statistical Society), and he was the 
inspirer and creator of the
federal university (today's Federal Institute of Technology), he experienced 
humiliating contempt
when he applied for a chair of political economy 
and statistics at this
university: the scientific commission simply refused to consider him.

As Franscini spent his entire life serving public interest and the 
advancement of knowledge, he was
forever making a precarious living. His salary as federal minister of the 
interior was scarcely enough
for the needs of a family with ten children and, at the end of his life, he 
was therefore obsessed by
the idea that after his death his family could plunge into extreme 
poverty. He thus decided to
resign his governmental tasks and to accept any position - however modest it 
might be - which
would allow him to secure an income for his family. His political friends 
proposed him for a post as a
director of the Archives of the canton Ticino, but he was not able to 
benefit from such an
``opportunity", as he died in Berne, still a federal councillor, on 19 
July 1857. An epitaph on
his tomb soberly expresses the integrity of the man and his tragic pain: 
``"Nacque povero, visse
povero, mori povero''" - "He was born poor, lived poor, died poor".

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"'Scientific rigour and democratic process'''

Franscini's scientific and political activities spanned a century 
quite attuned to the
enlightement's ideals and turned towards a positivistic conception of 
scientific and human progress.
The various facets of Franscini's career clearly reflect the spirit of his 
age. In his work as a
statistician and as a politician he always referred to science as a 
precondition for objective
knowledge of economic and social facts - and this evidence was directly 
linked to his conception of
human development and "good government".

Like other scientists of his age, Franscini 
upheld statistics as an
objective basis for knowledge of reality. In schematic terms, one can define 
his conception of
statistical science as ``knowledge of facts through rigourous measurement". In 
this sense, he certainly
could share the conception of statistical work defined by [[Quetelet, Adolphe|Adolphe Quételet]] in his "Instructions
populaires sur le calcul des probabilites'' - which was published the same 
year as the ''Statistica della
Svizzera''.  However, Quételet considered 
that human and social
phenomena were to be described and explained through mechanical laws. He 
believed that the real
scientific mission of statistics was to elaborate in the social sphere what 
Newton accomplished in
the celestial sphere. On the other hand, Franscini was not 
interested in this kind of theoretical
development. He considered statistics mainly as an applied science and his 
work aimed at
establishing a comprehensive social science in the modern sense of this 
term. He attached high
interest to statistical methods, but he considered these as means for 
providing accurate information.
Of course, the concept of "statistical information" was unknown to 
Franscini. Nevertheless, it
seems today the most appropriate concept for characterizing the achievement 
of his work, which
aimed explicitly at three main objectives:

i) First of all, Franscini wished to gather together all sorts of relevant 
information in order to
elaborate a unified image of Switzerland as a national entity. Such a task 
was an enormous
challenge, because until the middle of the nineteenth century the Swiss 
never considered their
country as a real national entity; they regarded it mainly as an 
alliance among cantonal
sovereign States. 
Franscini was conscious that
the building of an effective Swiss national entity needed stronger capacity 
for union based on a real
national identity. His statistical work was aimed at building a clear 
image of Switzerland as a
common home land of all Swiss people.
He did not simply ``describe" the 
Swiss nation but
contributed to building it through the statistical indices on material 
well-being, on domestic trade,
and on prevailing cultural practices" (P. Garonna and F. Sofia, 1996). 
Undoubtedly, this has been
one of Franscini's main achievements: his statistical portrait of the 
country contributed considerably
to the development of a new national awareness.

ii) A second explicit objective of Franscini - as a statistician as well as 
a politician - was to provide
the statistical information required 
for the
management of public affairs of a modern federal State. Thanks to Franscini, 
it became evident that 
statistical information was
an essential instrument for ``good government" and, in the framework of the 
new institutional order
inaugurated by the Swiss Constitution of 1848, statistics were then included 
in the functions of the
federal executive. In his capacity as minister of the interior Franscini 
thus applied his efforts to
laying the foundations of genuine official statistics, focusing on the 
production of the information
needed for the implementation of federal public policies.

iii) Last but not least, the third objective of Franscini's work was to 
develop statistical information
as a tool for education and public knowledge, enabling the population to 
understand the problems
of their country better. Such a pedagogic role of statistical information 
constitutes one essential
component of his conception of official statistics.
To Franscini, this was the most challenging 
mission of official statistics -
and this is perharps also one of the most pertinent and modern messages of 
his intellectual legacy:
statistical information should be considered as an inherent ingredient of 
the democratic process.

The main intentions of Franscini's work are condensed in his last book, 
"Semplici verita ai Ticinesi''
("Simple truths explained to people of Ticino", 1854). Here statistics do 
not appear at the
foreground, but  throughout they discretely support a 
didactic argument against
simplistic views on public debt and reduction of public expenditures. 
Franscini sincerely believed
that such complex issues could be explained to people on the basis of 
rigourous information and an
appropriate pedagogic approach. He considered this as a mark of both 
scientific and a civic
commitment of the statistician: vis-a-vis demagogic arguments and 
opportunistic decisions, he had
to make public and to explain pertinent simple truths. Franscini's 
conception of the role of scientists
in a democratic society still remains a topical subject because, as he 
used to say, "''la democrazia non è soltanto la maggioranza che vota, è anche la 
minoranza che pensai''" -
``democracy is not only the majority which votes, but also the minority which 
thinks".

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====References====
{|
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|  Calgari, G. (1968). ''Vita di Stefano Franscini'', Edizioni  Pedrazzini, Locarno. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|  Ceschi, R. (1996). ''Stefano Franscini: la vita e l'opera'', Centro  didattico cantonale, Bellinzona. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|3}}||valign="top"|  Franscini, S. (1827). ''Statistica della Svizzera, a cura di  R. Ceschi'',  Armando Dado, Locarno 1991. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|4}}||valign="top"|  Franscini, S. (1854). ''Semplici verita ai ticinesi sulle  finanze e su altri  oggetti di ben pubblico'', Introduzione di Ch. Marazzi, Armando Dado, Locarno 1996. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|5}}||valign="top"|  Friedrich, R. (1995). ''Stefano Franscini, pionnier de la  statistique en  Suisse'', Office federal de la statistique, Berne. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|6}}||valign="top"|  Garonna, P. and Sofia F. (1996). ''Statistics and  Nation-Building in  European History'', Preprint, CES  - ECE/UNO, Seminar on Official Statistics: Past and Future (Lisbon, 25-27  September 1996). 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|7}}||valign="top"|  Malaguerra, C. (1997). Stefano Franscini: From Statistics to Simple Truths, ''Bulletin of the International Statistical Institute'', 58, Book 1, 71-74.
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Reprinted with permission from
Christopher Charles Heyde and Eugene William Seneta (Editors),
Statisticians of the Centuries, Springer-Verlag Inc., New York, USA.

[[Category:Statprob]]
[[Category:Biographical]]