Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer | |
---|---|
Born | Derby, Derbyshire, England | 27 April 1820
Died | 8 December 1903 | (aged 83)
Notable work | Social Statics (1851) The Man Versus the State (1884) |
Era | 19th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Classical liberalism |
Main interests | Anthropology · Biology · Evolution · Laissez-faire · Positivism · Psychology · Sociology · Utilitarianism |
Notable ideas | Social Darwinism Survival of the fittest Social organism Law of equal liberty There is no alternative |
Signature | |
Part of a series on |
Liberalism |
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Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English
Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology, and psychology. During his lifetime he achieved tremendous authority, mainly in English-speaking academia. Spencer was "the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century"[3][4] but his influence declined sharply after 1900: "Who now reads Spencer?" asked Talcott Parsons in 1937.[5]
Early life and education
Spencer was born in
Spencer was educated in empirical science by his father, while the members of the Derby Philosophical Society introduced him to pre-Darwinian concepts of biological evolution, particularly those of
Career
Both as an adolescent and as a young man, Spencer found it difficult to settle to any intellectual or professional discipline. He worked as a civil engineer during the railway boom of the late 1830s, while also devoting much of his time to writing for provincial journals that were nonconformist in their religion and radical in their politics.
Writing
Spencer published his first book, Social Statics (1851), whilst working as sub-editor on the free-trade journal The Economist from 1848 to 1853. He predicted that humanity would eventually become completely adapted to the requirements of living in society with the consequential withering away of the state. Its publisher, John Chapman, introduced Spencer to his salon which was attended by many of the leading radical and progressive thinkers of the capital, including John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, George Henry Lewes and Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), with whom he was briefly romantically linked. Spencer himself introduced the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who would later win fame as 'Darwin's Bulldog' and who remained Spencer's lifelong friend. However, it was the friendship of Evans and Lewes that acquainted him with John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic and with Auguste Comte's positivism and which set him on the road to his life's work. He strongly disagreed with Comte.[9]
Spencer's second book, Principles of Psychology, published in 1855, explored a physiological basis for psychology, and was the fruit of his friendship with Evans and Lewes. The book was founded on the fundamental assumption that the human mind was subject to
Spencer argued that both these theories were partial accounts of the truth: repeated associations of ideas were embodied in the formation of specific strands of brain tissue, and these could be passed from one generation to the next by means of the Lamarckian mechanism of use-inheritance. The Psychology, he believed, would do for the human mind what Isaac Newton had done for matter.[11] However, the book was not initially successful and the last of the 251 copies of its first edition were not sold until June 1861.
Spencer's interest in psychology derived from a more fundamental concern which was to establish the universality of natural law.[12] In common with others of his generation, including the members of Chapman's salon, he was possessed with the idea of demonstrating that it was possible to show that everything in the universe – including human culture, language, and morality – could be explained by laws of universal validity. This was in contrast to the views of many theologians of the time who insisted that some parts of creation, in particular the human soul, were beyond the realm of scientific investigation. Comte's Système de Philosophie Positive had been written with the ambition of demonstrating the universality of natural law, and Spencer was to follow Comte in the scale of his ambition. However, Spencer differed from Comte in believing it was possible to discover a single law of universal application which he identified with progressive development and was to call the principle of evolution.
In 1858, Spencer produced an outline of what was to become the System of Synthetic Philosophy. This immense undertaking, which has few parallels in the English language, aimed to demonstrate that the principle of evolution applied in biology, psychology, sociology (Spencer appropriated Comte's term for the new discipline) and morality. Spencer envisaged that this work of ten volumes would take twenty years to complete; in the end, it took him twice as long and consumed almost all the rest of his long life.
Despite Spencer's early struggles to establish himself as a writer, by the 1870s he had become the most famous philosopher of the age.[13] His works were widely read during his lifetime, and by 1869 he was able to support himself solely on the profit of book sales and on income from his regular contributions to Victorian periodicals which were collected as three volumes of Essays. His works were translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese and Chinese, and into many other languages and he was offered honours and awards all over Europe and North America. He also became a member of the Athenaeum, an exclusive Gentleman's Club in London open only to those distinguished in the arts and sciences, and the X Club, a dining club of nine founded by T.H. Huxley that met every month and included some of the most prominent thinkers of the Victorian age (three of whom would become presidents of the Royal Society).
Members included physicist-philosopher
Later life
The last decades of Spencer's life were characterised by growing disillusionment and loneliness. He never married, and after 1855 was a life-long
The exception to Spencer's growing conservatism was that he remained throughout his life an ardent
He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1883.[18]
Invention of paper-clip
Spencer also invented a precursor to the modern paper clip, though it looked more like a modern cotter pin. This "binding-pin" was distributed by Ackermann & Company. Spencer shows drawings of the pin in Appendix I (following Appendix H) of his autobiography along with published descriptions of its uses.[19]
Death and legacy
In 1902, shortly before his death, Spencer was nominated for the
Synthetic philosophy
The basis for Spencer's appeal to many of his generation was that he appeared to offer a ready-made system of belief which could substitute for conventional religious faith at a time when orthodox creeds were crumbling under the advances of modern science.
In essence, Spencer's philosophical vision was formed by a combination of deism and positivism. On the one hand, he had imbibed something of eighteenth-century deism from his father and other members of the Derby Philosophical Society and from books like George Combe's immensely popular The Constitution of Man (1828). This treated the world as a cosmos of benevolent design, and the laws of nature as the decrees of a 'Being transcendentally kind.' Natural laws were thus the statutes of a well-governed universe that had been decreed by the Creator with the intention of promoting human happiness. Although Spencer lost his Christian faith as a teenager and later rejected any 'anthropomorphic' conception of the Deity, he nonetheless held fast to this conception at an almost subconscious level. At the same time, however, he owed far more than he would ever acknowledge to positivism, in particular in its conception of a philosophical system as the unification of the various branches of scientific knowledge. He also followed positivism in his insistence that it was only possible to have genuine knowledge of phenomena and hence that it was idle to speculate about the nature of the ultimate reality. The tension between positivism and his residual deism ran through the entire System of Synthetic Philosophy.
Spencer followed Comte in aiming for the unification of scientific truth; it was in this sense that his philosophy aimed to be 'synthetic.' Like Comte, he was committed to the universality of natural law, the idea that the laws of nature applied without exception, to the organic realm as much as to the inorganic, and to the human mind as much as to the rest of creation. The first objective of Synthetic Philosophy was thus to demonstrate that there were no exceptions to being able to discover scientific explanations, in the form of natural laws, of all the phenomena of the universe. Spencer's volumes on biology, psychology, and sociology were all intended to demonstrate the existence of natural laws in these specific disciplines. Even in his writings on ethics, he held that it was possible to discover 'laws' of morality that had the status of laws of nature while still having normative content, a conception which can be traced to George Combe's Constitution of Man.
The second objective of the Synthetic Philosophy was to show that these same laws led inexorably to progress. In contrast to Comte, who stressed only the unity of the scientific method, Spencer sought the unification of scientific knowledge in the form of the reduction of all natural laws to one fundamental law, the law of evolution. In this respect, he followed the model laid down by the Edinburgh publisher
Evolution
Spencer first articulated his evolutionary perspective in his essay, 'Progress: Its Law and Cause', published in Chapman's
The principles described by Herbert Spencer received a variety of interpretations. Bertrand Russell stated in a letter to Beatrice Webb in 1923: 'I don't know whether [Spencer] was ever made to realize the implications of the second law of thermodynamics; if so, he may well be upset. The law says that everything tends to uniformity and a dead level, diminishing (not increasing) heterogeneity'.[23]
Spencer's attempt to explain the
Spencer in his book Principles of Biology (1864), proposed a pangenesis theory that involved "physiological units" assumed to be related to specific body parts and responsible for the transmission of characteristics to offspring. These hypothetical hereditary units were similar to Darwin's gemmules.[24]
Sociology
Spencer read with excitement the original
Given the primacy which Spencer placed on evolution, his sociology might be described as social Darwinism mixed with Lamarckism. However, despite its popularity, this view of Spencer's sociology is mistaken. While his political and ethical writings had themes consistent with social Darwinism, such themes are absent in Spencer's sociological works, which focus on how processes of societal growth and differentiation lead to changing degrees of complexity in social organization[25]
The evolutionary progression from simple, undifferentiated homogeneity to complex, differentiated heterogeneity was exemplified, Spencer argued, by the development of society. He developed a theory of two types of society, the militant and the industrial, which corresponded to this evolutionary progression. Militant society, structured around relationships of hierarchy and obedience, was simple and undifferentiated; industrial society, based on voluntary, contractually assumed social obligations, was complex and differentiated. Society, which Spencer conceptualised as a 'social organism' evolved from the simpler state to the more complex according to the universal law of evolution. Moreover, industrial society was the direct descendant of the ideal society developed in Social Statics, although Spencer now equivocated over whether the evolution of society would result in anarchism (as he had first believed) or whether it pointed to a continued role for the state, albeit one reduced to the minimal functions of the enforcement of contracts and external defence.
Though Spencer made some valuable contributions to early sociology, not least in his influence on
Ethics
The endpoint of the evolutionary process would be the creation of 'the perfect man in the perfect society' with human beings becoming completely adapted to social life, as predicted in Spencer's first book. The chief difference between Spencer's earlier and later conceptions of this process was the evolutionary timescale involved. The psychological – and hence also the moral – constitution which had been bequeathed to the present generation by our ancestors, and which we in turn would hand on to future generations, was in the process of gradual adaptation to the requirements of living in society. For example, aggression was a survival instinct which had been necessary in the primitive conditions of life, but was maladaptive in advanced societies. Because human instincts had a specific location in strands of brain tissue, they were subject to the Lamarckian mechanism of use-inheritance so that gradual modifications could be transmitted to future generations. Over the course of many generations, the evolutionary process would ensure that human beings would become less aggressive and increasingly altruistic, leading eventually to a perfect society in which no one would cause another person pain.
However, for evolution to produce the perfect individual it was necessary for present and future generations to experience the 'natural' consequences of their conduct. Only in this way would individuals have the incentives required to work on self-improvement and thus to hand an improved moral constitution to their descendants. Hence anything that interfered with the 'natural' relationship of conduct and consequence was to be resisted and this included the use of the coercive power of the state to relieve poverty, to provide public education, or to require compulsory vaccination. Although charitable giving was to be encouraged even it had to be limited by the consideration that suffering was frequently the result of individuals receiving the consequences of their actions. Hence too much individual benevolence directed to the 'undeserving poor' would break the link between conduct and consequence that Spencer considered fundamental to ensuring that humanity continued to evolve to a higher level of development.
Spencer adopted a
Spencer's distinctive view of musicology was also related to his ethics. Spencer thought that the origin of music is to be found in impassioned oratory. Speakers have persuasive effect not only by the reasoning of their words, but by their cadence and tone – the musical qualities of their voice serve as "the commentary of the emotions upon the propositions of the intellect," as Spencer put it. Music, conceived as the heightened development of this characteristic of speech, makes a contribution to the ethical education and progress of the species. "The strange capacity which we have for being affected by melody and harmony, may be taken to imply both that it is within the possibilities of our nature to realize those intenser delights they dimly suggest, and that they are in some way concerned in the realization of them. If so the power and the meaning of music become comprehensible; but otherwise they are a mystery."[28]
Spencer's last years were characterized by a collapse of his initial optimism, replaced instead by a pessimism regarding the future of mankind. Nevertheless, he devoted much of his efforts in reinforcing his arguments and preventing the misinterpretation of his monumental theory of non-interference.
Agnosticism
Spencer's reputation among the Victorians owed a great deal to his agnosticism. He rejected theology as representing the 'impiety of the pious.' He was to gain much notoriety from his repudiation of traditional religion, and was frequently condemned by religious thinkers for allegedly advocating atheism and materialism. Nonetheless, unlike Thomas Henry Huxley, whose agnosticism was a militant creed directed at 'the unpardonable sin of faith' (in Adrian Desmond's phrase), Spencer insisted that he was not concerned with undermining religion in the name of science, but to bring about a reconciliation of the two. The following argument is a summary of Part 1 of his First Principles (2nd ed. 1867).
Starting either from religious belief or from science, Spencer argued, we are ultimately driven to accept certain indispensable but literally inconceivable notions. Whether we are concerned with a Creator or the substratum which underlies our experience of phenomena, we can frame no conception of it. Therefore, Spencer concluded, that religion and science agree in the supreme truth that human understanding is only capable of 'relative' knowledge. This is the case since, owing to the inherent limitations of the human mind, it is only possible to obtain knowledge of phenomena, not of the reality ('the absolute') underlying phenomena. Hence both science and religion must come to recognise as the 'most certain of all facts that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.' He called this awareness of 'the Unknowable' and he presented worship of the Unknowable as capable of being a positive faith which could substitute for conventional religion. Indeed, he thought that the Unknowable represented the ultimate stage in the evolution of religion, the final elimination of its last anthropomorphic vestiges.
Political views
Spencerian views in 21st-century circulation derive from his political theories and memorable attacks on the reform movements of the late 19th century. He has been claimed as a precursor by
Politics in late Victorian Britain moved in directions that Spencer disliked, and his arguments provided so much ammunition for conservatives and individualists in Europe and America that they are still in use in the 21st century. The expression "
Spencer anticipated many of the analytical standpoints of later right-libertarian theorists such as
Social Darwinism
For many, the name of Herbert Spencer is virtually synonymous with Social Darwinism, a social theory that applies the law of the survival of the fittest to society and is integrally related to the nineteenth-century rise in scientific racism. In his famed work Social Statics (1850), he argued that imperialism had served civilization by clearing the inferior races off the earth: "The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way. … Be he human or be he brute – the hindrance must be got rid of."[40] Yet, in the same work, Spencer goes on to say that the incidental evolutionary benefits derived from such barbarous practices do not serve as justifications for them going forward.[41]
Spencer's association with social Darwinism might have its origin in a specific interpretation of his support for competition. Whereas in biology the competition of various organisms can result in the death of a species or organism, the kind of competition Spencer advocated is closer to the one used by economists, where competing individuals or firms improve the well-being of the rest of society. Spencer viewed private charity positively, encouraging both voluntary association and informal care to aid those in need, rather than relying on government bureaucracy or force. He further recommended that private charitable efforts would be wise to avoid encouraging the formation of new dependent families by those unable to support themselves without charity.[42] Focusing on the form as well as the content of Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy", one writer has identified it as the paradigmatic case of "social Darwinism", understood as a politically motivated metaphysic very different in both form and motivation from Darwinist science.[43]
In a letter to the Japanese government regarding intermarriage with Westerners, Spencer stated that "if you mix the constitution of two widely divergent varieties which have severally become adapted to widely divergent modes of life, you get a constitution which is adapted to the mode of life of neither – a constitution which will not work properly." He goes on to say that America has failed to limit the immigration of Chinese and restrict their contact, especially sexual, with the presumed European stock. He states "if they mix they must form a bad hybrid" regarding the issue of Chinese and (ethnically European) Americans. Spencer ends his letter with the following blanket statement against all immigration: "In either case, supposing the immigration to be large, immense social mischief must arise, and eventually social disorganization. The same thing will happen if there should be any considerable mixture of European or American races with the Japanese."[44]
General influence
While most philosophers fail to achieve much of a following outside the academy of their professional peers, by the 1870s and 1880s Spencer had achieved an unparalleled popularity, as the sheer volume of his sales indicate. He was perhaps the only philosopher in history to sell over a million copies of his works during his own lifetime.[45] In the United States, where pirated editions were still commonplace, his authorised publisher, Appleton, sold 368,755 copies between 1860 and 1903. This figure did not differ much from his sales in his native Britain, and once editions in the rest of the world are added in the figure of a million copies seems like a conservative estimate. As William James remarked, Spencer "enlarged the imagination, and set free the speculative mind of countless doctors, engineers, and lawyers, of many physicists and chemists, and of thoughtful laymen generally."[46] The aspect of his thought that emphasised individual self-improvement found a ready audience in the skilled working class.
Spencer's influence among leaders of thought was also immense, though it was most often expressed in terms of their reaction to, and repudiation of, his ideas. As his American follower
In post-
The early 20th century was hostile to Spencer. Soon after his death, his philosophical reputation went into a sharp decline. Half a century after his death, his work was dismissed as a "parody of philosophy",[49] and the historian Richard Hofstadter called him "the metaphysician of the homemade intellectual, and the prophet of the cracker-barrel agnostic."[50] Nonetheless, Spencer's thought had penetrated so deeply into the Victorian age that his influence did not disappear entirely.
In recent years, much more positive estimates have appeared,[51] as well as a still highly negative estimate.[52]
Political influence
Despite his reputation as a social Darwinist, Spencer's political thought has been open to multiple interpretations. His political philosophy could both provide inspiration to those who believed that individuals were masters of their fate, who should brook no interference from a meddling state, and those who believed that social development required a strong central authority. In
Spencer’s work has frequently been seen as a model for later libertarian thinkers, such as Robert Nozick, and he continues to be read–and is often invoked–by libertarians on issues concerning the function of government and the fundamental character of individual rights.[54]
Spencer's ideas also became very influential in China and Japan largely because he appealed to the reformers' desire to establish a strong nation-state with which to compete with the Western powers. His thought was introduced by the Chinese scholar
Influence on literature
Spencer greatly influenced literature and rhetoric. His 1852 essay, "The Philosophy of Style", explored a growing trend of formalist approaches to writing. Highly focused on the proper placement and ordering of the parts of an English sentence, he created a guide for effective composition. Spencer aimed to free prose writing from as much "friction and inertia" as possible, so that the reader would not be slowed by strenuous deliberations concerning the proper context and meaning of a sentence. Spencer argued that writers should aim "To so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least possible mental effort" by the reader.
He argued that by making the meaning as readily accessible as possible, the writer would achieve the greatest possible communicative efficiency. This was accomplished, according to Spencer, by placing all the subordinate clauses, objects and phrases before the subject of a sentence so that, when readers reached the subject, they had all the information they needed to completely perceive its significance. While the overall influence that "The Philosophy of Style" had on the field of rhetoric was not as far-reaching as his contribution to other fields, Spencer's voice lent authoritative support to formalist views of rhetoric.
Spencer influenced literature inasmuch as many novelists and short story authors came to address his ideas in their work. Spencer was referenced by
Primary sources
- Papers of Herbert Spencer in Senate House Library, University of London
- Education (1861)
- System of Synthetic Philosophy, in ten volumes
- First Principles ISBN 0-89875-795-9(1862)
- Principles of Biology (1864, 1867; revised and enlarged: 1898), in two volumes
- Volume I – Part I: The Data of Biology; Part II: The Inductions of Biology; Part III: The Evolution of Life; Appendices
- Volume II – Part IV: Morphological Development; Part V: Physiological Development; Part VI: Laws of Multiplication; Appendices
- Principles of Psychology (1870, 1880), in two volumes
- Volume I – Part I: The Data of Psychology; Part II: The Inductions of Psychology; Part III: General Synthesis; Part IV: Special Synthesis; Part V: Physical Synthesis; Appendix
- Volume II – Part VI: Special Analysis; Part VII: General Analysis; Part VIII: Congruities; Part IX: Corollaries
- Principles of Sociology, in three volumes
- Volume I (1874–75; enlarged 1876, 1885) – Part I: Data of Sociology; Part II: Inductions of Sociology; Part III: Domestic Institutions
- Volume II – Part IV: Ceremonial Institutions (1879); Part V: Political Institutions (1882); Part VI [published here in some editions]: Ecclesiastical Institutions (1885)
- Volume III – Part VI [published here in some editions]: Ecclesiastical Institutions (1885); Part VII: Professional Institutions (1896); Part VIII: Industrial Institutions (1896); References
- Principles of Ethics, in two volumes
- Volume I – Part I: The Data of Ethics Archived 7 May 2005 at the Wayback Machine (1879); Part II: The Inductions of Ethics (1892); Part III: The Ethics of Individual Life (1892); References
- Volume II – Part IV: The Ethics of Social Life: Justice (1891); Part V: The Ethics of Social Life: Negative Beneficence (1892); Part VI: The Ethics of Social Life: Positive Beneficence (1892); Appendices
- First Principles
- The Study of Sociology (1873, 1896) Archived 15 May 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- An Autobiography Archived 27 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine (1904), in two volumes
- See also Spencer, Herbert (1904). An Autobiography. D. Appleton and Company.
- v1 Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer by David Duncan Archived 16 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine (1908)
- v2 Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer by David Duncan Archived 17 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine (1908)
- Descriptive Sociology; or Groups of Sociological Facts, parts 1–8, classified and arranged by Spencer, compiled and abstracted by David Duncan, Richard Schepping, and James Collier (London, Williams & Norgate, 1873–1881).
Essay Collections:
- Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions (1864, 1883)
- The Man Versus the State (1884)
- Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891), in three volumes:
- Volume I (includes "The Development Hypothesis," "Progress: Its Law and Cause," "The Factors of Organic Evolution" and others)
- Volume II (includes "The Classification of the Sciences", The Philosophy of Style (1852), The Origin and Function of Music," "The Physiology of Laughter," and others)
- Volume III (includes "The Ethics of Kant", "State Tamperings With Money and Banks", "Specialized Administration", "From Freedom to Bondage", "The Americans", and others)
- Various Fragments (1897, enlarged 1900)
- Facts and Comments (1902)
- Great Political Thinkers (1960)
Philosophers' critiques
- Herbert Spencer: An Estimate and Review (1904) by Josiah Royce.
- Lectures on the Ethics of T.H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau (1902) by Henry Sidgwick.
- Lester F. Ward.
- A Perplexed Philosopher (1892) by Henry George.
- Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence (1878) by William James.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b "Letter 5145 – Darwin, C. R. to Wallace, A. R., 5 July (1866)". Darwin Correspondence Project. Archived from the original on 13 May 2011. Retrieved 12 January 2010.
Maurice E. Stucke. "Better Competition Advocacy" (PDF). Archived from the original on 30 April 2011. Retrieved 29 August 2007.Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology of 1864, vol. 1, p. 444, wrote "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."
- ^ Riggenbach, Jeff (24 April 2011) The Real William Graham Sumner Archived 10 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Mises Institute.
- ^ Thomas Eriksen and Finn Nielsen, A History of Anthropology (2001) p. 37.
- ^ "Spencer became the most famous philosopher of his time," says Henry L. Tischler, Introduction to Sociology (2010) p. 12.
- ^ Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1937; New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 3; quoting from C. Crane Brinton, English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (London: Benn, 1933).
- ^ "Spencer, Herbert | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Archived from the original on 24 May 2020. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
- ^ Rev. Thomas Spencer (14 October 1796 – 26 January. 1853) – See: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26138/?back=,36208
- ^ Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer pp. 53–55
- ^ Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer p. 113
- ^ In 1844, Spencer published three articles on phrenology in The Zoist: A Journal of Cerebral Physiology & Mesmerism, and Their Applications to Human Welfare: "A New View of the Functions of Imitation and Benevolence" (Vol.1, No.4, (January 1844), pp. 369–385 Archived 9 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine); "On the Situation of the Organ of Amativeness" (Vol.2, No.6, (July 1844), pp. 186–189 Archived 9 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine); and "A Theory concerning the Organ of Wonder" (Vol.2, No.7, (October 1844), pp. 316–325 Archived 17 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine).
- ^ Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer p. 75
- ^ Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer p. 537
- ^ Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer p. 497
- ^ Steven Shapin (13 August 2007). "Man with a plan". newyorker.com. Archived from the original on 30 April 2015.
A lifelong hypochondriac, he had come for his health, to reinvigorate his "greatly disordered nervous system," and he withstood all inducements to what he called "social excitement."
- ISBN 978-1317493464. Archived from the original on 30 December 2018. Retrieved 30 December 2018 – via ndpr.nd.edu.)
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- ^ Smith, Goldwin, "My Social Life in London," The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CVI (1910), p.692.
- ^ Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer p. 464
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Archived from the original on 19 May 2021. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
- ^ Spencer, Herbert (1904). An Autobiography (1st ed.). London: Williams and Norgate. pp. 322–337, 564–565.
- ^ Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, p. 537
- ^ Collins, F. Howard (1889). An Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer (2nd ed.). London: Williams and Norgate.
- ISBN 9781441132062. Archivedfrom the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
- Egan, Kieran (2002). Getting it wrong from the beginning. Archivedfrom the original on 8 December 2012. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
- ISBN 978-90-481-9901-3
- ISBN 0-8039-2244-2.
- ^ Popular Science Monthly, Volume 44
- (PDF) from the original on 18 August 2014. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
- ^ "Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, Vol. 2 – Online Library of Liberty". oll.libertyfund.org. Archived from the original on 27 May 2019. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
- , p. 246.
- ^ Stringham, Edward. Anarchy and the Law. Archived 2 October 2022 at the Wayback Machine Transaction Publishers, 2007. p. 387.
- ^ Stringham, Edward. Anarchy and the Law. Archived 2 October 2022 at the Wayback Machine Transaction Publishers, 2007. p. 388.
- ^ Herbert Spencer, Facts and comments Archived 10 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine, p. 126.
- ^ Social Statics (1851), pp. 42, 307.
- ^ Ronald F. Cooney, "Herbert Spencer: Apostle of Liberty" Freeman (January 1973) Archived 7 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Chris Matthew Sciabarra, "Libertarianism", in International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, ed. Jens Beckert and Milan Zafirovski (2006), pp. 403–407. Online Archived 20 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine.
- ISBN 978-0199264797. "'Left-libertarianism' is a new term for an old conception of justice, dating back to Grotius. It combines the libertarian assumption that each person possesses a natural right of self-ownership over his person with the egalitarian premise that natural resources should be shared equally. Right-wing libertarians argue that the right of self-ownership entails the right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as unequal amounts of land. According to left-libertarians, however, the world's natural resources were initially unowned, or belonged equally to all, and it is illegitimate for anyone to claim exclusive private ownership of these resources to the detriment of others. Such private appropriation is legitimate only if everyone can appropriate an equal amount, or if those who appropriate more are taxed to compensate those who are thereby excluded from what was once common property. Historic proponents of this view include Thomas Paine, Herbert Spencer, and Henry George. Recent exponents include Philippe Van Parijs and Hillel Steiner."
- ^ "Herbert Spencer on the Land Question: A Criticism, by Alfred Russel Wallace". people.wku.edu. Archived from the original on 10 May 2019. Retrieved 23 November 2011.
- ^ "Herbert Spencer Anti-Defamation League (Part 423 of ???)". 3 April 2008. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
- OCLC 976817793.
- ISBN 978-1565843592.
- ^ Spencer, Social Statics, pp. 417-419.
- ISBN 1-86134-530-5.
- .
- ISBN 978-1406722383.
- ISBN 9780826424860.
- ^ James, William (1904). "Herbert Spencer". The Atlantic Monthly. XCIV: 104.
- ^ Quoted in John Offer, Herbert Spencer: Critical Assessments (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 612.
- .
- ^ Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, 1968, p. 222; quoted in Robert J. Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 243.
- ^ Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944; Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), p. 32.
- ^ Mark Francis, Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life (Newcastle, UK: Acumen Publishing, 2007).
- ^ Stewart (2011).
- ^ Plekhanov, Georgiĭ Valentinovich (1912), trans. Aveling, Eleanor Marx. Anarchism and Socialism Archived 4 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine, p. 143. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company.
- ^ Sweet, William (2010). "Herbert Spencer". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 28 May 2010.
- ^ Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1964.
- S2CID 58605626.
- ^ Kenneth Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1969.
- ^ Spencer to Kaneko Kentaro, 26 August 1892 in The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer ed. David Duncan (1908), p. 296.
- ^ Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. Inside the Enemy Camp. p. 35. Archived from the original on 5 March 2011. Retrieved 22 February 2010.
- ^ Sinclair, Upton; One Clear Call; R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh; August, 1949.
References
- 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
- Elliot, Hugh. Herbert Spencer. London: Constable and Company, Ltd., 1917
- Elwick, James (2003). "Herbert Spencer and the Disunity of the Social Organism" (PDF). History of Science. 41: 35–72. S2CID 140734426. Archived from the original(PDF) on 15 June 2007.
- Elliott, Paul. 'Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer and the Origins of the Evolutionary Worldview in British Provincial Scientific Culture', Isis 94 (2003), 1–29
- Francis, Mark. Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life. Newcastle UK: Acumen Publishing, 2007 ISBN 0-8014-4590-6
- Harris, Jose. "Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) online Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine, a standard short biography
- Hodgson, Geoffrey M. "Social Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals: A Contribution to the History of the Term" (2004) 17 Journal of Historical Sociology 428.
- Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. (1944) Boston: Beacon Press, 1992 ISBN 0-8070-5503-4.
- Kennedy, James G. Herbert Spencer. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1978
- Mandelbaum, Maurice. History, Man, and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-century Thought. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971.
- Parsons, Talcott. The Structure of Social Action. (1937) New York: Free Press, 1968.
- Rafferty, Edward C. "The Right to the Use of the Earth Archived 5 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine". Herbert Spencer, the Washington Intellectual Community, and American Conservation in the Late Nineteenth Century.
- Richards, Robert J. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
- from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
- Stewart, Iain. "Commandeering Time: The Ideological Status of Time in the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer" (2011) 57 Australian Journal of Politics and History 389.
- Taylor, Michael W. Men versus the State: Herbert Spencer and Late Victorian Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
- Taylor, Michael W. The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. London: Continuum, 2007.
- Turner, Jonathan H. Herbert Spencer: A Renewed Appreciation. Sage Publications, 1985. ISBN 0-8039-2426-7
- Versen, Christopher R. Optimistic Liberals: Herbert Spencer, the Brooklyn Ethical Association, and the Integration of Moral Philosophy and Evolution in the Victorian Trans-Atlantic Community. Florida State University, 2006.
By Spencer
- Duncan, David. The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (1908) online edition
- Spencer, Herbert. Spencer: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) edited by John Offer (1993)
- Spencer, Herbert. Social Statics: The Man Versus the State
- Spencer, Herbert. The Study of Sociology; full text online free Archived 17 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Psychology; full text online Archived 2 October 2022 at the Wayback Machine
- Spencer, Herbert. Social Statics, Abridged and Revised: Together with the Man Versus the State (1896), highly influential among libertarians full text online free Archived 24 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- Spencer, Herbert. Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1891) 283pp full text online
- Spencer, Herbert. An Autobiography (1905, 2 vol) full text online
- Online writings of Spencer Archived 2 October 2022 at the Wayback Machine
Further reading
- Burrow, J. W. "Herbert Spencer: The Philosopher of Evolution" History Today (1958) 8#10 pp. 676–683 online
- Harrison, Frederic (1905). (1 ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Ebeling, Richard M., "Herbert Spencer on Equal Liberty and the Free Society," American Institute for Economic Research, April 24, 2020
- Offer, John, ed. (2000). Herbert Spencer: Critical Assessments. 2. Taylor & Francis. p. 137. ISBN 978-0415181853.
- Weinstein, David (1998). Equal Freedom and Utility: Herbert Spencer's Liberal Utilitarianism. "Land nationalization and property". Cambridge University Press. pp. 181–209. ISBN 978-0521622646.
External links
Biographical
- Weinstein, David (27 February 2008). "Herbert Spencer". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Sweet, William, Herbert Spencer entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Sources
- Works by Herbert Spencer at Biodiversity Heritage Library
- Works by Herbert Spencer at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Herbert Spencer at Internet Archive
- Works by Herbert Spencer at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- On Moral Education, reprinted in Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (Spring 1966)
- "The Right to Ignore the State" by Herbert Spencer.