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Topic: Herbert Spencer

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Survival of the fittest

Social Darwinism

Charles Robert Darwin

Charles Darwin

Classical liberalism

Cultural evolution

Evolution of societies

Darwinism

Liberalism

Florian Znaniecki

The Voyage of the Beagle

Sociology

Jean Lamarck

Max Weber

Emile Durkheim

	Herbert Spencer [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Spencer's influence extended into the upper echelons of American society and it has been claimed that, in 1896, "three justices of the Supreme Court were avowed 'Spencerians'." His reputation was at its peak in the 1870s and early 1880s, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902.
		Spencer's ethics and political philosophy, then, depends on a theory of 'natural law,' and it is because of this that, he maintained, evolutionary theory could provide a basis for a comprehensive political and even philosophical theory.
		Spencer further maintained that the utilitarian account of the law and the state was also inconsistent---that it tacitly assumed the existence of claims or rights that have both moral and legal weight independently of the positive law.
	www.utm.edu /research/iep/s/spencer.htm (3489 words)

	Herbert Spencer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Spencer often analyzed human societies as evolving systems, and coined the term "survival of the fittest." He contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, metaphysics, religion, politics, rhetoric, biology and psychology, and was renowned for the long-reaching and accessible qualities of his work.
		Spencer was a supporter of the “law of equal liberty,” a basic tenet of libertarianism that says that each individual should be allowed to do as he or she wills as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of another person.
		Spencer's two main areas of influence were the scientific evolutionary ideas of survival of the fittest, and his political ideas of radical classical liberalism.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Herbert_Spencer (2906 words)

	Spencer, The Man Versus The State, with Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom, Front Matter: Library of ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Spencer's status as a political heretic during this and succeeding decades should not obscure his broader role as a valued member of the scientific secularist intellectual community.
		Spencer fails to see the implications of granting the government a positive regulatory function in external affairs because he confuses this significant concession with the truism (applicable to both internal and external affairs) that the government must have positive control over its own apparatus.
		When Herbert Spencer died on December 8, 1903 it was with the conviction that, at least as a political thinker and writer, his life had been in vain.
	www.econlib.org /library/LFBooks/Spencer/spnMvS0.html (2653 words)

	Grant Allen: "Reminiscences of Herbert Spencer"
		Spencer enunciated in his day many thousand propositions on every possible subject from the ultimate constitution of the Cosmos down to the proper shape of jugs and the English poor-laws; it is not likely that any one else could follow him implicitly in every one of these multifarious judgments.
		Herbert Spencer came of a race of schoolmasters, a circumstance to which he often apologetically attributed his extremely critical and exacting disposition.
		Spencer, with his usual eagerness to find out weak points in a governmental agency, was anxious to trace the origin of this miscarriage, and insisted, in such French as he could muster, upon inquiring whether the letter had been delayed in transmission, or merely not delivered by the hotel servants.
	ehlt.flinders.edu.au /english/GA/Spencer.htm (7681 words)

	Herbert Spencer: The Defamation Continues by Roderick T. Long
		Spencer popularized a powerful new term: "survival of the fittest." He declared that man and society were evolving according to their inherited nature.
		Indeed, Spencer saw the misery and starvation of the pauper classes as an inevitable decree of a "far-seeing benevolence," that is, the laws of nature.
		In fact Spencer maintained that "forcible supplantings of the weak by the strong" belonged to a relatively primitive phase in the development of human civilization, one that was beginning to wane, and deserved to wane, in favor of an "advanced social state" based on mutual respect and mutual benevolence.
	www.lewrockwell.com /orig3/long3.html (2790 words)

	The First Dialectical Libertarian: Herbert Spencer
		In this regard, Herbert Spencer was one of the most important classical liberal thinkers to pioneer an alternative "dialectical libertarianism." His contributions to this project have yet to be fully appreciated, although his contributions to general systems theory in sociology are well known.
		Spencer ([1879-93] 1978) argues likewise that "a detached arm" is one in name only and that it must be integrally understood as part of the organic whole to which it belongs.
		Long predating Hayek, Spencer ([1984] 1981) views society as a spontaneous "growth and not a manufacture." His focus on the "mutual dependence of parts" within a society and on the analytical "integrity of the whole" does not lead him to embrace the organic collectivism of traditional holistic approaches.
	www.nyu.edu /projects/sciabarra/essays/spencer.htm (1400 words)

	Herbert Spencer
		Herbert Spencer was born in 1820 during the period of British industrialism.
		Spencer had many very extreme political views and grew to despise government programs that were aimed to help the poor.
		Spencer was like Darwin in some ways, but when it came down to the theory of evolution, Spencer took it one step further than Darwin by saying that it involved much more that just biology.
	www.6sociologists.20m.com /spencer.html (365 words)

	Herbert Spencer (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) is typically, though quite wrongly, considered a coarse social Darwinist.
		Moreover, for Spencer as for Mill, liberty was sacrosanct, insuring that his utilitarianism was equally a bona fide form of liberalism.
		Spencer's liberal utilitarian credentials are therefore compelling as his 1863 exchange of letters with Mill further testifies.
	plato.stanford.edu /entries/spencer (4291 words)

	Psyography: Biographies on Psychologists (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Herbert Spencer was born on April 27, 1820 in Derby, England (Bolender 2004).
		Herbert as an adult was seen as having a lack of tact when dealing with other people; he attributed this to his father and his uncle individualistic views.
		Herbert wrote many publications and had many ideas, it is no wonder he had the impact he did during his time, which then led to his impact on psychology.
	faculty.frostburg.edu /mbradley/psyography/herbertspencer.html (1235 words)

	Defaming Herbert Spencer? A Reply to Edwin Black by Roderick T. Long
		Spencer was not adcoating [sic] or responsibility [sic] for coercive sterilization, Darwin was not, Malthus was not.
		Herbert Spencer was an advocate of compulsory sterilization.
		Spencer argued the strong over the weak, and believed that human entitlements and charity itself were false and against nature.
	www.lewrockwell.com /orig3/long5.html (1693 words)

	Derbyshire People - Herbert Spencer - founder of modern sociology (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Herbert Spencer, founder of modern sociology, was born in 1820, in Exeter Street, Derby, son of George Spencer and Harriet, daughter of John Holmes of Brailsford and Derby, a glazier and plumber.
		Herbert Spencer worked as a railway engineer from 1837 to 1841, before, in his early 20's, turning to journalism and political writing.
		Herbert Spencer then embarked on a more comprehensive work, called A system of Synthetic Philosophy, or First Principles, which provided a systematic account of his views in biology, sociology, ethics and politics.
	www.derbyshireuk.net /spencer.html (371 words)

	Herbert Spencer (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Spencer is seen by some as the originator of Social Darwinism, although his theories were sharply at odds with some of what is commonly understood by that term.
		Many may not be aware that it was Spencer, and not Darwin who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", as well as popularizing the term "evolution." Spencer is also acknowledged as one of the founders of the science of sociology.
		Herbert Spencer should not be confused with Edmund Spenser, the British poet.
	herbert-spencer.kiwiki.homeip.net (338 words)

	Social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, American Laissez-faire Capitalism, lesson plans
		Spencer said that diseases "are among the penalties Nature has attached to ignorance and imbecility, and should not, therefore, be tampered with." He even faulted private organizations like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children because they encouraged legislation.
		In England, Herbert Spencer grew increasingly pessimistic as he witnessed a swelling tide of legislation that attempted to end the evils of industrialization and laissez-faire capitalism.
		Spencer died in 1903, and was buried in the same London cemetery as that great enemy of capitalism, Karl Marx.
	www.crf-usa.org /bria/bria19_2b.htm (2274 words)

	Herbert Spencer Biography \| Encyclopedia of World Biography
		Herbert Spencer was born in Derby on April 27, 1820.
		Spencer systematically tried to establish the basis of a scientific study of education, psychology, sociology, and ethics from an evolutionary point of view.
		Spencer's demand that historians present the "natural history of society," in order to furnish data for a comparative sociology, is also credited with inspiring James Harvey Robinson and the others involved in the writing of the New History in the United States.
	www.bookrags.com /biography/herbert-spencer (1044 words)

	Herbert Spencer - The Person (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		George Eliot once remarked of Herbert Spencer, whom she knew well, that "the life of this philosopher, like that of the great Kant, offers little material for the narrator." She was right.
		Spencer was born on April 27, 1820, in Derby, in the bleak and dismal English Midlands, the heart of British industry.
		Spencer's mother Harriet is described as a patient and gentle woman whose marriage to his irascible and irritable father seems not to have been happy.
	www2.pfeiffer.edu /~lridener/DSS/Spencer/SPENCPER.HTML (668 words)

	Herbert Spencer / Biography (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Spencer's book The Principles of Biology (1864-67) was used as a text at Oxford University; his The Principles of Psychology (1855) became a text at Harvard University; and at Yale University, his Study of Sociology (1873) was the textbook for the first course offered in the United States on sociology.
		Spencer's significance to these diverse disciplines is that he was one of the first to affirm that human society may be studied scientifically and that he did so from an evolutionary point of view based on the assumption that human behavior is socially determined.
		His evolutionary theories were conceived before those of Charles Darwin, and Spencer is thought to have coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." In his later 3-volume work, Principles of Sociology (1876-96), Spencer clarified his belief that social structures arise out of social functions.
	www.cooperativeindividualism.org /spencerbio.html (195 words)

	Herbert Spencer (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Herbert Spencer was a British philosopher, born in Derby on April 27, 1820.
		Spencer most resembled the eighteenth century philosophers in his attempt to apply the implications of science to social thought and action.
		He felt that the ultimate result of universal evolution was "equilibration" or the achievement of a state of perfect equilibrium, whether it was in the development of an animal organism or within human society.
	www.mnsu.edu /emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/spencer_herbert.html (336 words)

	Herbert Spencer
		The Victorian biologist and early social philosopher Herbert Spencer was a great rival of Charles Darwin's.
		Spencer's own thinking was derived in part from the socio-philosophical counterpart of English Romanticist thought - perhaps best exemplified in the work of William Godwin, Thomas Malthus, Thomas Lamarck and von Baer.
		In Spencer's view, evolution is actually a progressive movement towards an "equilibrium" where individual beings change their characteristics and habits until they are perfectly adapted to circumstances and no more change is called for.
	cepa.newschool.edu /het/profiles/spencer.htm (332 words)

	Herbert Spencer
		Presenting Spencer's classic attempt to expose the flaws in socialism and to assert political individualism as the best way to guarantee social progress, this book will be interest to undergraduates and specialists in politics, political theory, social policy, sociology and history....
		Spencer, Herbert (1820-1903), British social philosopher, often regarded as one of the first sociologists.
		Unlike Darwin, Spencer was never much of an observer or indeed a reader, and his independent formulation of a theory of evolution developed from his speculations in social theory and psychology.
	www.erraticimpact.com /~19thcentury/html/spencer.htm (443 words)

	The American Experience \| Andrew Carnegie \| People & Events \| Herbert Spencer
		Spencer's writings provided the philosophical justification for Carnegie's unabashed pursuit of personal riches in the world of business, freeing him from the moral reservations about financial acquisition that he had inherited from his egalitarian Scottish relatives.
		Spencer adapted Charles Darwin's notion of natural selection and applied the theory to human society in a philosophy that became known as "Social Darwinism." It was Spencer who coined the term "survival of the fittest," using it to apply to the fate of rich and poor in a laissez faire capitalist society.
		Spencer argued that there was nothing unnatural -- and therefore wrong -- with competing and then rising to the top in a cut- throat capitalist world.
	www.pbs.org /wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande03.html (1062 words)

	Herbert Spencer: Apostle of Freedom (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Spencer recognizes and meets head on the argument which says that by providing aid to the poor the State is actually increasing the freedom of action of the poor, however much it may be reducing the freedom of the man who pays for poor relief.
		Spencer answers: "Cutting away men's opportunities one side, to add to them on another, is at best accompanied by a loss." The State, he argues, can only guarantee the freedom of a person to act to the fullest extent of his rights, bounded, as always, by the equal freedom of other men.
		Spencer himself never wearied of pointing out to these "new" liberals how far they had strayed from true liberalism, and how greatly their notion of liberalism differed from his own.
	www.libertyhaven.com /thinkers/herberspencer/herbertspencer.html (2131 words)

	Herbert Spencer
		He admitted, for instance, that the parts of an organism are in direct contact, while the members of a society are not; but he argued that communication considerably reduced this difference.
		Spencer's work had a political as well as a scientific dimension.
		Spencer's greatest contribution perhaps was to encourage people to try thinking of society and culture, no less than stones and pinecones, as belonging to the natural world.
	www2.truman.edu /~rgraber/cultev/spencer.html (540 words)

	Spencer, Herbert. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05
		In First Principles (1862), the first of the projected volumes, Spencer distinguished phenomena from what he called the unknowable—an incomprehensible power or force from which everything derives.
		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.
		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.
	www.bartleby.com /65/sp/SpencerH.html (264 words)

	Raw Carrot » Herbert Spencer (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		How on earth would they ever manage to finance their ridiculous schemes to create “e-citizens” (you are all invited to become one here) and to give lots of free stuff, including furnished housing, ipods, and money to people who have demonstrated their total disregard for the law, society and the concept of personal responsibility.
		Herbert Spencer has been maligned enough over the years without more ill-informed individuals writing about him and failing to grasp his philosophy.
		Certainly a number of prominent thinkers (Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, …) have all believed that through a minimalist government - a government that does not compel people to provide aid to others - people will be freer to aid others on a voluntary basis.
	clients.voltuum.com /rawcarrot/category/herbert-spencer (1837 words)

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