Spencer, Herbert,

Spencer conceived a vast 10-volume work, Synthetic Philosophy, in which all phenomena were to be interpreted according to the principle of evolutionary progress. In First Principles (1862), the first of the projected volumes, he distinguished phenomena from what he called the unknowable—an incomprehensible power or force from which everything derives. He limited knowledge to phenomena, i.e., the manifestations of the unknowable, and maintained that these manifestations proceed from their source according to a process of evolution. In The Principles of Biology (2 vol., 1864–67) and The Principles of Psychology (1855; rev. ed., 2 vol., 1870–72) Spencer gave a mechanistic explanation of how life has progressed by the continual adaptation of inner relations to outer ones. In The Principles of Sociology (3 vol., 1876–96) he analyzed the process by which the individual becomes differentiated from the group and gains increasing freedom. In The Principles of Ethics (2 vol., 1879–93) he developed a utilitarian system in which morality and survival are linked. Spencer's synthetic system had more popular appeal than scientific influence, but it served to bring the doctrines of evolution within the grasp of the general reading public and to establish sociology as a discipline.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1904); J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (1971); M. Francis, Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life (2007).

Spencer, Herbert

Born in Derby, after an unconventional schooling Spencer began a career as a railway engineer, but soon moved into journalism and later became an independent scholar.

His first major work, Social Statics (1850), revealed his firm commitment to economic individualism and the free market, a commitment that continued throughout his work and is one of the main reasons for the great popularity of his sociology in the US.

Spencer's early interest in geology had led him into the field of biology, and from there to the evolutionary theories of LAMARCK. These ideas became the informing principle of his social theory. As early as 1852, in a paper entitled ‘A Theory of Population’, Spencer had argued that the process of social DEVELOPMENT was decisively influenced by 'struggle (for existence) and ‘fitness’ (for survival). Thus he anticipated by some six years aspects of the theory of natural selection which Darwin and Wallace were to apply with such success to the organic world, but he did this while continuing to include Lamarckian assumptions. In The Principles of Psychology (1855), Spencer attempts to show how the evolutionary hypothesis could also illuminate mental development.

‘Progress: its Law and Cause’, an essay written in 1857, found Spencer arguing that the evolutionary principle was a law of universal applicability, defining development in the physical, organic and social spheres.

Evolutionary theory thus provided a basis for the unification of the sciences. Whatever trajectory of development was studied the movement was always towards increasing DIFFERENTIATION and INTEGRATION of structure. Systems, be they solar, biological or social, always manifested a tendency to move from a state where their constituent parts were homogeneous and loosely cohering, to one where they were increasingly heterogenous and integrated.

Spencer's later work, widely read and highly influential at the time, was concerned primarily with justifying this position, His Synthetic Philosophy, a multivolume project, covering sociology, psychology, biology and ethics, was one outcome. Thus, Spencer's sociology (e.g. his Principles of Sociology 1876-96), should properly be seen as one subfield in which he sought the wider objective of securing consent to the universality of the evolutionary process.

Some of Spencer's concepts, such as those of‘differentiation’ and ‘integration’, have retained their currency as sociological tools, especially within the SOCIAL SYSTEMS perspective and neoevolutionary work of Talcott Parsons. But Spencer's sociology is deeply compromised by his enthusiasm for unifying it with biology, and for his sometimes uncritical assumption that biological science could provide the appropriate concepts for studying society If'struggle’ motivated organic evolution, so warfare was important in social development, promoting both internal social cohesion and the development of powerful, specialized industrial economies; if the development of sophisticated nervous systems in the animal world enhanced the survival capacity of certain species, the same was true of telecommunications systems in society, and so on. The connection between these views and Spencer's politics is obvious: if social conflict was an evolutionary positive, the market should be unregulated, and the state minimalist (The Man Versus the State, 1884).

Whatever the judgement made about these economic and political prescriptions for social wellbeing, the sociology from which Spencer derived them is not acceptable. Social systems are not biological systems. People create and transform the environment in which they live. They are moral beings, and ‘the survival of the fittest’ is also a moral judgement (see SOCIAL DARWINISM). Competition may often be productive but only in a context with a preexisting framework of order and regulation rather than one of anarchy (compare DURKHEIM). The universality of the evolutionary process in the social sphere is also questionable; developmental patterns cannot be consistent, since the development of some societies alters the possibilities of change for others (see also DIFFUSION, MULTILINEAR EVOLUTION). The most compromising problem with Spencer's work, however, is the circularity of the logic he employs in its execution. It was small wonder that Spencer felt he had proved his evolutionary hypothesis in the social world since the evidence he used, the classification of different kinds of institutions and types of societies, was a classification derived from the very principles which the examples were supposed to prove. Spencer's legacy to sociology nevertheless remains an important one. He was a systems theorist, and was the first to make systematic use of STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONAL analysis, still a mainstay of sociological explanation.

Spencer, Herbert