LIFE AND WORKS OF HERBERT SPENCER
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) is known as a pioneer of Social
Evolutionary Theory. Evolutionary views were adopted by Spencer
before Darwins The Origin of Species(1859). The British Sociologist-scientist, was a leading figure in the intellectual revolution of
the nineteenth century.
Spencer in his own time was enormously influential and played a significant role in the development of biology psychology, sociology and anthropology. Spencer was born in a middle class family in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820. He was the oldest of nine children and the only one to survive. This was perhaps one of the reasons that he advocated the idea of the “survival of the fittest” in his theory of evolution. His father, William George Spencer, was a schoolmaster of progressive educational views. William George Spencer’s influence on his son’s attitudes and behaviour was considerable. Father’s non-authoritarian teaching methods strongly influenced Spencer’s educational theories and democratic discipline in the classroom. Spencer’s mother, Harriet, exerted comparatively little influence on his intellectual development. She was sweet-tempered, submissive, dutiful and selfless.
Spencer never went to a conventional school. Spencer was, in fact, taught at home by his father and uncle. At the age of thirteen, he moved to the home of an uncle Thomas, rector of Hinton Charterhouse Somerset, for his further study. His uncle, the Dissenting clergyman taught Spencer the principles of philosophical Radicalism and rigid code of dissenting Protestantism. The education Spencer receive from his father and uncle leaved heavily on the scientific side received no formal Instruction in English, and his knowledge of history was superficial, he had a good back once at the age of sixteen. In 1837 he began to work as a civil engineer for a railway till 1946. During this period Spencer continued to study on his own fix and political works. In 1848 Spencer tor of The Economist and his intellectual ideas Economical works. In yon his own and began to publish se was appointed an edirbegan to take shan with the economist, Spen advanced journalism essential to human harm was published in 1851. In his sociological theory and as the writing of this work, Spend take shape in a specific direction. During the naist, Spencer built up his relations in the world of diournalism in London. While Social Statics: the human happiness specified, and the first of them developed din 1851. In this work, he has presented the core ideas logical theory and a study in political philosophy. Draining of this work, Spencer began to suffer the problem of min mental and physical breakdown and a series of nervous sakdowns that was continued through of his life.
Seven years before Darwin’s Origin of Species, in 1852, he expounded and advocated a theory of evolution based on Lamarckian principles in his article entitled “The Development Hypothesis” in the journal Leader. It is a pre-Darwinian theory of evolution stressing the notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. After his uncle’s death in 1853, Spencer gave up his job with the Economist and lived the life as a private scholar and a lifelong bachelor.
In 1854, Spencer began writing his second book, The Principles of Psychology, was published in the next year. But this work did not get good recognition. Soon after he suffered from a nervous illness due to which he was unable to concentrate, unable to write, and even unable to read. In 1859, Spencer was influenced by Charles Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species. He absorbed a lot of his ideas from Darwin regarding evolution. The ideas of “survival of the fittest” and the “natural selection” were basic to Spencer’s theory of evolution that was taken from Charles Darwin.
From 1860 and onwards, Spencer wrote several books on concepts, theories, and all-encompass theories, and all-encompassing universal laws. The unification of Spencer’s evolutionary theory in 1860 was the culmination of a long period of speculation and the integration of eyries of initially unrelated ideas. The perfect theory of evolution *pounded in First Principles called Synthetic Philosophy was lished in 1862. In this work, he synthesized a variety of scientific philosophical lines of thought. The several volumes of Principles of Biology were issued between 1864 and 1867. The Principles of Biology was prescribed as a university text-book. Thereafter, The Study of Sociology appeared in 1873. This work served Spencer as an introduction to the Principles of Sociology proper, and taught him a great deal about sociological method and objectivity.
Early in1874. Spencer commenced work on The Principles of Society and published multi-volume of this work in 1896. In addition, a multi-volume work entitled, Principles of Psychology were published in 1872. He also wrote many volumes on Principles of Ethics and was published between the seventies and the nineties. The Man Versus the State appeared in 1884 and the Autobiography in 1904. “He published several volumes of essays and fragments as well as many volumes of Descriptive Sociology (1873-1894), mainly written by his secretaries and collaborators. Spencer also advocated the principle of Larissa faire or free market which was popularised by the English economists of his time. Sociologists in the twentieth century came to reject Spencer’s work because of the fact that he did not concentrate and read the works of other people.
In fact, he independently created ideas of his own. Finally, at the end of his life he died as a sad man because he believed that his life work has not achieved its goal as much as he expected. He died on December 8, 1903, at the age of eighty-three.
Important Sociological Works
– Social Statics, (1851)
– First Principles, (1862)
– The Study of Sociology, (1873)
– Descriptive Sociology, (1890)