Herbert Spencer 1820 – 1903

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist who set himself the task, in his ten-volume System of Synthetic Philosophy, of unifying biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics under the single principle of evolution. He coined the phrase survival of the fittest, applied evolutionary thinking to social and political questions, and articulated a classical-liberal political philosophy in The Man versus the State. Although his system has not retained its former dominance, his influence on the development of modern social science was very wide, and his books outsold those of any other philosopher of his century.