Spencer, Herbert

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was one of the most influential thinkers of his time. To understand why, one must read Spencer as an evolutionary theorist. This is how he saw himself and how his contemporaries responded to him and his work. It is what marked his place in the history of sociology and what accounts for his influence far beyond the confines of the discipline he helped to found.

Who is Spencer? Spencer was born on April 27, 1820, at Derby, England, the only surviving child of William George Spencer and Harriet Holmes. In his autobiographical writings, Spencer offers a brief intellectual history of himself, identifying how key aspects of his life were linked to the origins and transformations of his evolutionary ideas. Not surprisingly, he begins with the nonconformist upbringing he received at the hands of the Spencer family and the family of his mother. To this upbringing and, in particular, his father, he attributes the early development of emotional and intellectual traits that were to operate throughout his life: a willingness to resist arbitrary authority no matter the source (church or state) or the cost (financial or health); the mental habits of seeking natural causes, analyzing, and synthesizing; and a love of completeness that would reach its fullest expression in a 10-volume Synthetic Philosophy that covered religion, philosophy of science, biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics. George Spencer was a teacher, but poor health prevented him from educating his son. Spencer thus went to a day school until 1830 when his uncle William Spencer resumed teaching at the school that he had inherited from his father. Spencer remained there as one of a select number of pupils until 1833 when he moved to Hinton to attend a school run by another uncle, Thomas Spencer, who, like his brothers, emphasized science and mathematics at the expense of the classics. This education prepared Spencer for the career as a civil engineer he began with the London and Birmingham Railway at the age of 17. Lasting off and on until 1846, this career in civil engineering provided opportunities to exercise mental habits developed in childhood and boyhood and resulted in several of the inventions that Spencer would make during his lifetime. It also rekindled a boyhood interest in collecting fossils, prompting Spencer to read Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1831–1833). During this period, his uncle Thomas encouraged him to write the series of 12 letters on the proper sphere of government that were published in The Nonconfomist—a newspaper established by and for the advanced dissenters. But it was not until he became the subeditor of The Economist in 1848 that he began the literary career that, despite major ups (e.g., the legacies from his uncles Thomas and William, endorsements of the Synthetic Philosophy by the chief men of science, leading men of letters and statesmen) and downs (e.g., persistent health problems, financial difficulties) was to occupy him for the rest of his life.

Spencer was a prolific writer. In addition to the Synthetic Philosophy, he published Social Statics (1855), Education (1861), The Study of Sociology (1873), The Man versus the State (1884), three series of Essays (1857, 1863, 1874), [Page 782]Various Fragments (1897), Facts and Comments (1902), Descriptive Sociology (1873–1881), An Autobiography (1904), and “The Filiation of Ideas,” a natural history of his evolutionary theory that was completed in March of 1899 and included in David Duncan's biography, Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (1908). Throughout his life, Spencer was a regular contributor to the major general periodicals and specialty journals both as an author and as a reviewer. He was a member of the famous X Club, nine leading men of science who successfully challenged the cultural authority of the clergy by advocating scientific, naturalistic explanations of world. His election to the Athenaeum Club in 1867 by the committee under Rule 2 (a rule allowing the committee to select chief representatives of science, literature, and art) solidified his place in the elite intellectual circles of his day. By also publishing widely in magazines and newspapers, he established himself not just as a prominent member of the scientific community but also as a popularizer of science and, in particular, evolutionary theory.

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