Herbert Spencer

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Herbert Spencer (April 27, 1820 – December 8, 1903) was a highly influential English philosopher and political theorist. He had an encyclopedic range, writing on topics of government, ethics, education, economics, sociology, biology, psychology and anthropology. He originated some of the ideas of evolution picked up by Charles Darwin. Spencer's main theme was that powerful forces of social evolution were systematically making mankind better and better. In politics he was a 19th century liberal--similar to modern libertarians--who opposed to government intervention of any sort and provided the arguments that conservatives still use to oppose socialist and liberal proposals.

Life

Spencer was born into a poor but well-educated family. He was home-schooled by his father and his uncle Thomas Spencer, an evangelical clergyman who had been educated at Cambridge University. Starting at age 17 he spent four years as a civil engineer building railways, and the highly systematic engineering mode of analysis characterized his intellectual approaches. He never married.

Religion

Although raised in a devout Methodist family, he never joined a church. He was a defender of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and coined the terms "the Survival of the fittest"[1] and "the Descent of Man." Spencer, like many scientists of the time, was a deist, which is to say he did not believe in God per se, but only in a god. Eventually, Spencer became an agnostic.

Influence

Spencer had a major influence on world thinkers in Europe, Asia and Latin America, especially British and American thinkers of the 1870s, including such prominent conservatives as Andrew Carnegie and William Graham Sumner. Spencer's influence faded in Britain and America after 1900.


Spencer is largely remembered today for his theories of social Darwinism, the idea that evolutionary ideas applied to societies as well as people. Spencer developed his ideas before Darwin, and "social darwinism" dealt only with the progressive betterment of human society.

Bibliography

  • Carneiro, Robert L. and Perrin, Robert G. "Herbert Spencer's 'Principles of Sociology:' a Centennial Retrospective and Appraisal." Annals of Science 2002 59(3): 221-261 online at Ebsco
  • Duncan, David. The life and letters of Herbert Spencer (1908) online edition
  • Francis, Mark. Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life. (2007) 464p.
  • Harris, Jose. "Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,(2004) online, a standard short biography
  • Taylor, Michael W. The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer (Continuum Studies in British Philosophy) (2007) excerpt and text search
  • Taylor, Michael W., Men versus the State: Herbert Spencer and Late Victorian Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  • Weinstein, David. Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer's Liberal Utilitarianism. (1998) 235p.
  • Weinstein, David. *Herbert Spencer in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Primary sources

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ fit - meaning suitable, or the right size and shape, not fit as in athletically strong (although some have inferred this interpretation).
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