Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer
Spencer at the age of 73
Born	(1820-04-27)27 April 1820 Derby, Derbyshire, England
Died	8 December 1903(1903-12-08) (aged 83) Brighton, Sussex, England
Nationality	British
Era	19th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Evolutionism, positivism, classical liberalism
Main interests	Evolution, positivism, laissez-faire, utilitarianism
Notable ideas	Social Darwinism Survival of the fittest
Influences Democritus, Aristotle, Charles Darwin, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, George Henry Lewes, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Thomas Henry Huxley
Influenced Charles Darwin, Henry Sidgwick, William Graham Sumner, Murray Rothbard, Émile Durkheim, Henri Bergson, Charles Sanders Peirce, Auberon Herbert, Yan Fu, Jack London
Signature

Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.

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. "The only other English philosopher to have achieved anything like such widespread popularity was Bertrand Russell, and that was in the 20th century." Spencer was "the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century" but his influence declined sharply after 1900: "Who now reads Spencer?" asked Talcott Parsons in 1937.

Spencer is best known for the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology (1864), after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. This term strongly suggests natural selection, yet as Spencer extended evolution into realms of sociology and ethics, he also made use of Lamarckism.

Spencer was born in Derby, England, on 27 April 1820, the son of William George Spencer (generally called George). Spencer's father was a religious dissenter who drifted from Methodism to Quakerism, and who seems to have transmitted to his son an opposition to all forms of authority. He ran a school founded on the progressive teaching methods of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and also served as Secretary of the Derby Philosophical Society, a scientific society which had been founded in 1783 by Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin.