Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England on April 27, 1820. He was the first of seven children of William George Spencer and Harriet Homes Spencer, and the only one to survive infancy.
His father was a teacher and school master who has inherited a school from his father, Matthew Spencer.
The education that Spencer received from his father placed a heavy emphasis on empirical science.
This was reinforced by his experience of roaming the countryside where he collected specimens, acquired a tolerable knowledge of animal and insect life and taught himself how to sketch from nature.
When Herbert Spencer was seventeen one of his uncles secured a job for him as a civil engineer with a railway company in London.
Technical education and experience led him to see himself as a philosopher. His books sold more than 100,000 copies, even after most of them had been issued in serial form a various journal-like publications.
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" in 1852. The concept of the survival of the fittest was later adopted by Darwin.
Survival of the fittest, meaning not the strongest but those best suited to a particular environment. This leads to the third point in Darwin’s scheme.
Spencer argued that the development of all aspects of the universe is evolutionary, including human character and social institutions, in according with principle of ‘survival of the fittest’
Among his books include:
*Social statistics (1850)
*The Principles of Psychology (1855)
*Essays 1858 -1874 (3 volumes)
*Education: Intellectual, Moral, Physical (1861)
*First Principles (1862)
*The Principles of Biology 1864-1867 (2 volumes)
He died on 8 December 1903.
Biography of Herbert Spencer
