Spencer, Herbert
Spencer, Herbert
(1820-1903) was the great English philosopher who devoted a life time to the formulation and execution of a plan to follow the idea of development as a first principle through all the avenues of human thought. A precursor of Darwin with his famous notion of all organic evolution as a change “from homogeneity to heterogenity,” from the simple to the complex, he nevertheless was greatly influenced by the Darwinian hypothesis and employed its arguments in his monumental works in biology, psychology, sociology and ethics. He aimed to interpret life, mind and society in terms of matter, motion and force. In politics, he evidenced from his earliest writings a strong bias for individualism. See Evolutionism, Charles Darwin. — L.E.D.
Main worksSystem of Synthttic Philosophy (First Principles of Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Ethics), 1862-92; On Moral and Physical Education, 1861.