1820-1903
"Every man is free to do that
which he wills, provided he
infringes not the equal
freedom of any other man."
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Born in Derby, England on April 27, 1820
Weak & sickly child.
Father (George) was a teacher.
Had no formal education.
Father taught him Sciences and Math, but
education was weak in other areas.
Father taught Spencer from an extremist
nonconformist perspective.
 Father
was unkind to his mother.
 Herbert
thought of his mother as “simpleminded.”
 Uncle Thomas
taught principles of
philosophical radicalism.
 Entire
family very nonconformist and
individualistic.
 Worked
as civil engineer for railway.
 Found fossils while doing railway work
• Sparked interest in evolution.
 Eventually
quit job to pursue other
interests.
 Began to publish articles in the radical
press:
• Argued for extreme restrictions on government.
• Against welfare.
• Against national education.
• Against established church.
 Became
subeditor with London
Economist
• Laissez-faire beliefs
 1851-
finished 1st book Social Statics
• Power should be given to whole society.
• Lays the basis for a limited state.
 During
writing he began to experience
insomnia, began smoking opium to cope
• Could only work a few hours a day.
• Suffered from nervous breakdowns.
 Uncle
died and left Spencer money.
 1855- 2nd book The Principles of
Psychology
• Grounded psychology in evolutionary biology
• Different parts of the cerebrum subserve
different kinds of mental action.
• Very complex.
 Soon
after second book, he suffered from
a nervous illness.
 More
works published:
• The social Organism (1860)
• First Principles (1862)
• Principles of Biology (1864-67)
• The study of sociology (1873)
• The principles of Ethics- many volumes (1870s)
• The Principles of Sociology- many volumes (1890s)
• The Man Versus the State (1884)
• Autobiography (1904)
Social Evolution
 Cultural
evolution
• Humans adapt to environmental changes
through our culture rather than biological
adaptation.
• Could not be stopped
 Importance of minimal government intervention.
 Benefits of the individualism and the industrial
Revolution
Growth, Structure,
and Differentiation
 Societal
Complexity
• Increase in social aggregates accompanied by
an increase in the complexity of structure.
 Differentiation
of Functions
• Creation of specialized social roles and
institutions leading to an interdependence of the
parts of society
 Adaptive
upgrading conditioned by:
• 1. External factors
• 2. Internal factors
• 3. Derived factors
Functionalism
 Society
development
 Social
institutions arise from structural
requirements
 Division
of labor
Survival of
The Fittest
 Coined
the term, not Darwin
 Eliminates
unfavorable variations of
species
 Focused
on both biological and social
processes
 Cold-hearted
orphaned
toward poor, widowed, and
War and
Militarism
 Two
classifications of society
• 1. Militant & industrial
• 2. Level of integration
 Society
was similar to an organism
 General law of organization
• Common to both biological and social organism
 Structure
of a military
 Purpose of a military
• Not to conquer other nations
Utilitarianism
 Equal
liberty principle
• Broadly utilitarianism view
• Goal of human action
 Rejects
conventional Benthamite view of
public interest
• Absolute rights of individuals
Thomas Malthus
An Essay on the Principles of Population

•
Although his outlook on the problem of
overpopulation was not quite as pessimistic,
Spencer believed that overpopulation would lead
to the “survival of the fittest”
“Survival of the fittest” had two basic
outcomes

1.
2.
The excess of fertility could stimulate greater
activity
The conflict for scarcity of goods would accelerate
into political and territorial conflicts
George Lewes &
Karl Von Baer
 Reading
Lewes’ work provided Spencer
with the general background of
philosophical thought
 Von
Baer’s principles allowed Spencer to
organize his ideas on biological,
psychological, and social evolution
Biology
 Spencer
wrote the first volume of the
Principles of Biology in 1864 and wrote the
second in 1867
 He agreed with post-Newtonian views of
science
• Universal laws exist that could explain the
phenomena in the world
 Proposed
three propositions:
1.The law of persistence force
2.The indestructibility of matter
3.The continuity of motion
Biology

Spencer acknowledged the role of environmental
variables on social organization and agreed that
the Super Organic (society) and the Organism
(body) had six similarities:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Society and individuals grow
As size increases so does complexity
Progression in structure is accompanied by a differentiation in
function
Parts of the whole are interdependent of one another
Every organism is a society
Some parts die, and some parts go on.
Biology
Spencer did however, feel that there were
some distinct differences between an
organism and society:

1.
The degree of connectedness
2.
Communication
3.
Differences in Consciousness
Thomas Huxley
A
lifelong friend of Spencer’s.
 Introduced
Spencer to many scientific
facts.
 Was
also known as Darwin’s “bulldog,”
his most vocal supporter and defender.
Charles Darwin
 Origin
of Species in 1859 was welcomed
warmly by Spencer.
 Darwin’s theory of evolution offered
Spencer a respected intellectual tool for
justifying his laissez-faire beliefs.
 Darwin’s theory of evolution and
Spencer’s survival of the fittest concepts
have become mistakenly
interchangeable.
Auguste Comte
 Spencer was not overly impressed with Comte.
 Areas of agreement between Comte and
Spencer:
1. Knowledge comes from positive methods
2. There are invariable laws in the universe that can be
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
discovered and utilized
The different branches of knowledge form a rational
whole.
Social phenomena form an interdependent whole
Both developed theories of evolution and progress
Spencer accepted Comte’s term of sociology for the
science of superorganic bodies.
Spencer reluctantly gave credit to Comte for
reintroducing the organismic analogy back into thought.
Auguste Comte
 Spencer
disagreed with Comte on the
following issues:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Societies passed through three distinct stages.
Causality is less important than the building of social theory.
Government can use the laws of sociology to reconstruct society
Sciences have developed in a particular order.
Psychology is merely a subdiscipline of biology.
Spencer especially disagreed with Comte’s sense of a positivist
religion and sociologist-priests.
Concerning the emphasis of evolutionary thought; where Comte was
focused on the evolution of ideas, Spencer was interested in
structural (and functional) evolution.
Comte believed that individuals could be taught morality, largely
through the positivist religion, but Spencer ridiculed the idea that
morality could be taught by any means, let alone religion or the
government.
In short, Spencer is an individualist, whereas Comte is a
combination of liberal-individualist and conservativecollectivist
 DNA
 Industrialization
 Militant
and industrial analysis still valid
today
 Survival of the fittest
• Social encounters
 One
should never be satisfied with
simply surviving
Realism

Idealism- Held that we cannot know the nature of
reality in itself
Realism

vs. Idealism
vs. Nominalism
Nominalism- Believes that abstract concepts are
a social construction (i.e. society)
Idealism
vs. Materialism
 Materialism Idealism Believes
In the biology of evolution
In social evolution
evolution is a social construct