Herbert Spencer: Biography And Work

Herbert Spencer was one of the greatest thinkers of his time. This English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist and naturalist was the greatest leader of social Darwinism and positivism of his time.

He applied the evolutionary laws to philosophy and society. His Darwinian ideas, however, justified the dominance of certain people over the rest, as did the superiority of one human race over the other races.

These ideas were well received in the Western world in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The success of his work proves it. Spencer even managed to attract the attention of many thinkers from very different fields.

Some authors were open to a debate about his ideas. Big names like Emile Durkheim, George Edward Moore or Thomas Hill Green were often associated with Spencer. Without a doubt, he was a very prolific and controversial figure.

Herbert Spencer’s biography

Early years and education

Herbert Spencer was born in 1820 to a modest family in Derby, United Kingdom. He died in 1903 in Brighton, United Kingdom. Although he went to school, he did not learn to read until he was seven years old. In his teens he studied sciences, but he never stood out as a good student.

He studied engineering sciences completely independently. Between 1837 and 1846 he worked in the railway sector. In those years, Herbert continued to learn and study under his own steam. He also published several books on science and politics. Years later, in 1948, he became editor of The Economist magazine .

This change put an end to his career as an engineer and began his new career as a writer and philosopher. In 1851, Spencer published his first official book, Social Statics , in which he predicted that humanity would adapt to living in a society without the need for the state.

Career and books

Spencer visited to meet up with other fellow thinkers. During these meetings he met some positivist authors who inspired him to write The Principles of Psychology in 1855.

In it he defended that the human mind was subject to natural laws that could be explained through physiology and biology.

Years later he published A System of Synthetic Philosophy . With this work he wanted to prove that the principles of evolution were equally applicable to philosophy, psychology and sociology. It was one of his greatest works. It consists of ten parts that he wrote over a period of twenty years.

It was not common in those days for philosophy books to be bestsellers. Usually the best-selling works were novels. Herbert Spencer, however, stood out as a highly influential thinker, selling over a million copies of his work during his lifetime. He was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902.

Herbert Spencer and Psychology

Herbert Spencer wrote his work before Darwin. Therefore, he merged associationism and physiology with Lamarckism. For example, Spencer was decades ahead in the psychology of adaptation. He saw development as the process by which the connection between ideas precisely mirrored the connection between the dominant events in the environment.

The connections were made by the old principles of continuity and contingency. Therefore, the development of the mind represents an adaptive adaptation to the environmental conditions. The English writer has also conceptualized the brain as an organized record of experiences.

He also claimed that instinct was a learned associative habit. He also argued that the mental processes of some species have been reduced to the number of associations that the brain of the animal in question can perform. In other words, for Spencer, the differences between the mental faculties of the different species were thus quantitative.

Social Darwinism

Herbert Spencer made several statements on a very controversial subject. He argued that social groups had different possibilities to dominate nature and assert their superiority.

Thus, the rich were more capable than the poor, because the former were at the top of society and the latter at the bottom.

For Spencer, society worked like a biological being. Therefore, he justified the dominance of “superior” races and argued that we should reduce the number of weak people in the world. Imperialism and racism thus formed the basis of his theories.

According to him, strong, smart people had to fight for survival, which meant preventing the decline of society. If the weak or least capable people outnumbered the strong (physically and intellectually), then a country was in danger.

Thoughts on the Life and Work of Herbert Spencer

In conclusion, we can say that Spencer defended a positivist, biological and evolutionary view of philosophy, psychology and sociology.

He considered learning and physical and psychological adaptability very important. However, his work was misinterpreted to fit the narrative of racists and supremacists, who cited it as scientific evidence for their claims.

Misinterpreting and adapting an author’s work is not something that has happened only to the work of Herbert Spencer. It happened again and again throughout history.

Something similar happened to Machiavelli and even Nietzsche. Nazis and anti-Semites used their works to support racist claims. It is not easy to talk about the superiority of one group over another without causing controversy.

In addition, philosophical and literary works must be approached from a certain perspective. That’s why you need to research the time and context in which those ideas were published. That way you can better understand the thoughts of the author.

Controversy and speculation aside, there is no doubt that Herbert Spencer distinguished himself as the greatest multidisciplinary thinker of his time.