Spencer, Herbert 1820–1903

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was a nineteenth-century English social philosopher who sought to explain all domains of the universe in terms of some “cardinal” or “first principles” of evolution. He termed his approach “synthetic philosophy,” and before he was done he wrote treatises on ethics (1851, 1892–1898), psychology (1855), biology (1864–1867), and, eventually, sociology (1874–1896). He also wrote a major work on methodology in the social sciences (1873) that was far superior to anything written at the time, and he commissioned the largest collection of data by a sociologist on human societies in the sixteen volumes of his Descriptive Sociology (under various authors from 1873 to 1934). This latter project served as the inspiration for the Human Relations Area Files initiated by George P. Murdock, which sought to categorize and quantify qualitative data from ethnographic studies of societies.

Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” almost a decade before the English naturalist Charles Darwin’s analysis of natural selection appeared; in many ways, modern views of Spencer are colored by this phrase and the social advocacy it contains. In fact, Spencer’s arguments about “ethics” taint present-day perceptions of his work because by today’s political standards they appear conservative, although they were liberal in Spencer’s time. Perhaps the most unfortunate impression of Spencer’s sociology is its association of the rise of social Darwinism and the eugenics movement with Spencer’s advocacy. Both of these movements gained traction long after Spencer’s death; thus, Spencer cannot be seen as a key player in what they advocated.

Spencer’s ideas were, however, used by some key advocates of social Darwinism or eugenics. For example, in his key work, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930), the English evolutionary biologist Ronald A. Fisher significantly advanced the field of genetics in the first half of the book, but used Spencer’s ideas to promote a version of eugenics in the second half. The same is true for social Darwinists who often invoked Spencer’s (and, more often, Darwin’s) name to legitimate their advocacy that the natural competition among individuals should be allowed to play itself out within societies just as it does in the natural world. Spencer used the phrase “survival of the fittest” most often within sociology to address the topic of how war had historically allowed societies to evolve, with the more organized and fit society generally winning a war and advancing the level of organization of human societies. Still, he did advocate that competition among individuals and collective actors within societies should go unregulated, letting the more fit survive. In reading Spencer’s more scholarly works, however, and particularly his sociology, there is very little of this latter form of advocacy. And yet, in the twenty-first century Spencer’s reputation is often tied to discredited intellectual movements. Spencer was an ideologue when he wrote on ethnics, to be sure, but he was also a scientist and scholar whose works have not received the attention that they deserve because of the prejudices against his ideological moments.

Thus, Spencer was more than an ideologue. His collected works comprise one of the most comprehensive collections of scholarship ever produced in the social sciences. His sociological works, which came late in his career, are perhaps his most important because they draw upon the vast body of data assembled by scholars under his financial sponsorship and patronage into the volumes of Descriptive Sociology. The Principles of Sociology (1874–1896) presents a functional approach, emphasizing that the evolution of human societies is the result of population pressures for structural and cultural differentiation around three main axes: operation (functional needs for production and reproduction), regulation (needs to consolidate power), and distribution (needs to create infrastructures and exchange systems for moving people, resources, and information about a society). What scholars often overlook in this analysis is the emphasis on power. Most of The Principles of Sociology examines the effects of concentrated power on increasing inequality which, in turn, shapes the structure of key institutional systems: economy, kinship, religion, and polity. He also developed a theory of microdynamics, revolving around ceremony under varying levels of concentrated power and inequality.

In The Principles of Sociology, Spencer presented a geopolitical theory of human evolution, emphasizing the effects of inter-societal conflict on social complexity and on concentrated power. War was the main referent for the phrase “survival of the fittest” in Spencer’s sociology; with this idea, he documented that, in general, the more complex and better organized society will generally defeat the less complex and less organized society. With conquest, then, comes the successive ratcheting up of the level of societal complexity. However, war forces the centralization of power that, in turn, increases the level of inequality. Inequalities pose internal threats that, ironically, force more centralization of power to manage them—thereby escalating inequality in a cycle that ultimately leads to societal dissolution or deevolution. Still, despite this cyclical dynamic, societies have become larger and more differentiated over the long course of history. When differentiation of societies has produced free markets as the main mechanism for distribution, Spencer felt that war and its effects on centralization of power and inequalities in all institutional spheres work against further societal evolution. War and concentrated power create what in the 2000s is termed the “military-industrial complex” that deprives the economy of capital and limits innovation, thus serving as a drag on societal evolution.

Spencer was the most-read social philosopher of the nineteenth century, yet modern social scientists rarely consult his work because it is associated with discredited intellectual and social movements in which Spencer was not an active participant. In many ways, this state of affairs is a bit unfair to Spencer’s legacy but it is also understandable given the extremes to which Spencer’s ideas were taken by later ideologues. Still Spencer’s collective works contain many useful insights that can still serve social science (for a detailed analysis of Spencer’s sociology see Turner 1985; for a complete primary and robust secondary bibliography on Spencer’s work see Perrin 1993).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY WORKS

Spencer, Herbert. 1851. Social Statics; or, Conditions Essential to Human Happiness. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Spencer, Herbert. 1855. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Spencer, Herbert. 1862. First Principles. New York: A. L. Burt.

Spencer, Herbert. 1864–1867. The Principles of Biology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Spencer, Herbert. 1873. The Study of Sociology. London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul.

Spencer, Herbert. 1874–1896. The Principles of Sociology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2002.

Spencer, Herbert. 1892–1898. The Principles of Ethics. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

SECONDARY WORKS

Fisher, R. A. 1930. The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Oxford: Clarendon.

Perrin, Robert G. 1993. Herbert Spencer: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography. New York: Garland.

Turner, Jonathan H. 1985. Herbert Spencer: A Renewed Appreciation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Jonathan Turner