[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

Today marks the birthday of Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820---8 December 1903), a thinker whose contributions to philosophy, biology, psychology, sociology, and political theory earned him the status of required reading in most universities a century ago. Today he is largely forgotten -- except in ludicrously inaccurate caricature as a"Social Darwinist" who supposedly advocated letting the poor and weak die off in order to improve the breed. (Nope, he never said it.) These days most of Spencer's works are out of print; no historic plaque marks his London residence (38 Queen's Gardens, just north of Kensington Gardens; I paid my respects there last May), and his grave is overgrown and neglected. Happily, however, interest in Spencer seems to be reviving of late.

Spencer was one of the last stalwarts of classical liberalism, holding up the banner of peace and freedom, and inveighing against regimentation and the régime of status, long after the liberal mainstream had sold out to collectivism and militarist imperialism. After working as a railroad engineer and an editor at The Economist, Spencer devoted the rest of his life to developing, over the course of many volumes, an integrated and systematic theory of life and society. His political philosophy (which I summarize in Herbert Spencer: Libertarian Prophet) anticipated -- and influenced -- much of contemporary libertarian thought. Likewise, his theories of spontaneous social order, pattern-perception, and the self-defeating character of direct utilitarianism anticipate the work of Friedrich Hayek; his evolutionary cosmology anticipates that of astrophysicist David Layzer and chemist Ilya Prigogine; his writings on the relation between statism, militarism, and male supremacy anticipate the insights of radical feminism; and his pre-Darwinian (1852) critique of creationism could have been written yesterday.

One of Spencer's contemporaries described him as a"prophet whose greatest discoveries can only be duly appreciated after two or three centuries." Let’s hope we can accelerate that process a bit. (For a list of online works by and about Spencer, click here.)