Chapter1: Introduction: Sociological Theory

HERBERTSPENCER:A BiographicalSketch

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was born in Derby, England, on April 27,1820. He was not schooled in the arts and humanities, but rather in technical and utilitarian matters. In 1837 he began work as a Civil engineer for a railway, an occupation he held until 1846. During this period, Spencer continued to study on his own and began to publish scientific and political works.

In 1848 Spear was appointed an editor of The Economist, and his intellectual ideas began to solidify. By 1850, he had completed his first major work, Social Statics. During the writing of this work, Spencer first began to experience insomnia, and over the years his mental and physical problems mounted He was to suffer a series of nervous breakdowns throughout the rest of his life.

In 1853 Spencer received an inheritance that allowed him to quit his job and live for the rest of his Ida as a gentleman scholar He never earned a university degree or held an academic position. AS he grew mere isolated, and physical and mental illness mounted, Spencer's productivity as a scholar increased. Eventually, Spencer began to achieve not only fame within England but also an international reputation. AS Richard Hofstadter put it: "In the three decades after the Civil War it was impossible to be active in any field of intellectual work without mastering Spencer" (1959:33). Among his supporters was the important industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who wrote the following to Spencer during the latter's fatal illness of 1903:

Dear Master Teacher.,. you come to me every day in thought, and the everlasting "why" intrudes_Why lies he? Why must he go? . . . The world jogs on unconscious of its greatest mind,.,. But it will wake some day to its teachings and decree Spencer's place is with the greatest.

(Carnegie, cited in Peel, 1971:2)

But that was not to be Spencer's fate.

One of Spencer's most interesting characteristics, one that was ultimately to be the cause of his intellectual undoing, was his unwillingness to read the work of other people.In this, he resembled another early giant of sociology, Auguste Comte, who practiced "cerebral hygiene." Of the need to read the works of others, Spencer said: “All my life I have been a thinker and not a reader, being able to say with Hobbes that 'if I had read as much as other men I would have known as little'" (Wiltshire, f978:67). A friend asked Spencer's opinion of a book, and "his reply was that on Iooking into the book he saw that its fundamental assumption was erroneous, and therefore did not care to read (Wiltshire, 1978:67). One author wrote of Spencer's "incomprehensible way of absorbing knowledge through the powers of his skin ... he never seemed to read books"(Wiltshire, 1978:67),

If he didn't read the work of other scholars, where, then, did Spencer's ideas and insights come from? According to Spencer,they emerged involuntarily and intuitively from his mind. He said that his ideas emerged “little by little, in unobtrusive ways,without conscious intention or appreciable effort" (Wiltshire, 1978:66). Such intuition was deemed by Spencer to be far more effective than careful study and thought: "A solution reached in the way described is more likely to be true than one reached in the pursuance of a determined effort [which] causes perversion of thought" (Wiltshire,1978:66). Spencer suffered because of his unwillingness to read seriously the works of other people. In fact, if he read other work, it was often only to find confirmation for his own independently created ideas. He ignored those ideas that did not agree with his. Thus,his contemporary, Charles Darwin, said of Spencer: "if he had trained himself to be observe more, even at the expense of . . .some Ioss of thinking power, he would have been a wonderful man" (Wiltshire, 1978:70).

Spencer's disregard for the rules of scholarship led him to a series of outrageous ideas and unsubstantiated assertions about the evolution of the world. For these reasons,sociologists in the twentieth century came to reject Spear's work and to substitute for it careful scholarship and empirical research. Spencer died on December 8,1903.

SPENCER AND COMTE

A usesful starting point for this discussion is the relationship between Spencer's ideas and those of Auguste Comte. Although the lives of Spencer and Collate overlapped, the two men were separated by the English Channel (Spencer was British, and Comte was French) and there was a substantial difference in their ages (Comte was twenty two years old when Spencer was born, arid Spencer lived for forty-six years after Comte's death and into the twentieth century). Thus, Comte had completed most of his work before Spencer published his first book, Social Statics, hi 1850. However, almost as soon as Spencer had published Social Statics, comparisons began to be made between his theories and those of Comte. A number of seeming similarities exist between the work of the two men, bet Spencer most often fell the need to distinguish his theories from those of Comte.

Spencer commented on Comte's work in various places and even felt compelled to write an essay titled "Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte" (1864/1883/1968). Spencer began with great, if only obligatory, praise for Comnte's work: "In working out this conception [of positivism] be has shown remarkable breadth of view, great originality, immense fertility of thought, unusual powers of generalization" (1864//883/1968:118), In spite of such an encomium, Spencer was concerned mainly with positioning himself as one of Comte's "antagonists" and with distinguishing his own ideas from those of Comte because their work was "so utterly different in nature" (Spencer, 1904a:414).

Spencer did acknowledge his terminological debt to Comte by admitting, "I also adopt his word, Sociology" (1864/1883/1968:130). Both derived the terms structure and function largely from biology, and they tended to use them in similar ways. In utilizing these terms and the perspective they imply, both Spencer and Comte played key historic roles in the development of structural functionalism. Floweret, regarding another set of terms, social statics and social dynamics, there are important differences between the two men. Although Spencer uses these terms, he denies that they are drawn from or resemble Comte's identical terms. ~ his autobiography, Spencer contends that when Social Statics (1850/1954) was published, he "knew nothing more of Auguste Comte, than that he was a French philosopher" (1904a:414). For Comte, these terms refer to all types of societies, whereas Spencer relates them specifically to his future ideal society. Spencer defines social statics as dealing with "the equilibrium era perfect society" and social dynamics as relating to "the forces by which society is advanced toward perfection" (185011954:367). Thus, for Spencer the terms social statics and social dynamics are normative, and for Comte they are descriptive.

Spencer classifies himself, like Comte, as a positivist interested in the discovery of the invariant laws of the social world, but he hastens to add that positivism was not invented by Comte. Although Spencer sees himself as a positivist, he does not accept Comte's version of positivism, especially Comte's sense of a positivist religion. Spencer, like Comte. deals with a wide range of sciences, but unlike Comte, he argues that "the sciences cannot be rightly placed in any linear order whatever' (1883:/85). Rather, Spencer views the sciences as being interconnected and interdependent. Another major distinction made by Spencer is between Comte's subjectivity (his concern with ideas) and Spencer's objectivity (his concern with things):

What is Comte's professed aim? To give a coherent account of the progress of human conceptions. What is my aim? To give a coherent account of the progress of the external world. Comte proposes to describe the necessary, and the actual, filiation of ideas. I propose to describe the necessary, and actual, filiation of things Comte professes to interpret the genesis of our knowledge of ,nature. My aim is to interpret, as far as it is possible, the genesis of the phenomena which constitute nature. The one end is subjective, the other is objective.

(Spencer, 1904b:570)

Thus, although both Spencer and Comte were concerned with the evolution of the world, Comte was mainly interested in the evolution of ideas, whereas Spencer focused on structural (and functional) evolution.

Finally, there are powerful political differences between Spencer and Comte. As we saw in the previous chapter, Comte wanted to construct a society, even a world, dominated by a positivistic religion of humanity and led by the high priests of positivism.Spencer countered that Comte's faith that "the 'Religion of Humanity' will be the religion of the future is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction"( 1873/1961:283 ). In addition, Spencer had little regard for centralized control, which he felt would do far more harm than good. Thus, Spencer's ideal is a society in which the government is reduced to a minimum and individuals are allowed maximum freedom.we will return to Spencer's political ideas later in the chapter, but suffice it to say that they axe radically different from Comte's polities. Spencer was led to muse on how 'profoundly opposed" were Comte's and his "avowed or implied ideals of human life and human progress" (1904a:414).

Comte believed that individuals could be taught morality, largely through the positivist religion, but Spencer ridiculed the idea that morality could be taught in any fashion and by any means. Spencer believed that moral ideas emerge from individual action. In arriving at this conclusion, Spencer used here, as he did in many other places in his work, a survival-of-the-fittest perspective. In this specific case, the requirements of an orderly life will force people to act on the basis of their higher moral sentiments and repress their lower sentiments; in other words, people will be rewarded for moral behavior and penalized for immoral behavior. To put it another way, moral actions are likely to survive, whereas immoral actions are not. Spencer concludes that this "natural selection" of moral actions "alone is national education" (1873/1961:340).

In sum, although Spencer and Comte shared concerns with sociology, structures and functions, social statics and social dynamics, positivism, the relationships among the sciences, the evolution of the world, the future ideal society, and morality, there are profound differences in their views on most of these topics as well as in their overall theories. Given this relationship-or, more accurately, this lack of a strong relationship----we turn to a discussion of Spencer's sociological theory.

GENERAL THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES

Spencer's thoughts on the social world are based on a series of general theoretical principles. He begins by arguing that in the early history of humankind religion and science were unified in their efforts to analyze and understand the world (Spencer, 1902/1958).Gradually, the two begin to separate, with religion coming to focus on the unknowable and science on that which can be known. However, this differentiation is far flora complete, even in the modem era, so religion and science continue to overlap and to conflict. In fact, Spencer sees his own work as involving elements of science (intelligence) and religion (morals).

Spencer's main concern was with the knowable world and was therefore much more scientific than it was religious. (This is another contrast to Comte, whose later work be-came far more religious than scientific.) Science could never know the ultimate nature of things, but it could strive for the highest possible degree of knowledge. Before we can get to Spencer's thoughts on science, we first need to deal with his philosophy, which Spencer sees as transcending the sciences in the search for the complete unification of knowledge, for "truths which unify concrete phenomena belonging to all divisions of Nature" (1902/1958:277). In this section we will discuss Spencer's "general philosophy," in which he deals with "universal truths" for all the world, and later we will analyze Iris "special philosophies" and the narrower, but still universal, truths of specific areas, especially those relating to the social world. In emphasizing the overarching character of philosophy, Spencer rejects the positivistic idea that the goal of science is the reduction of an array of complex laws to a simple law and accepts, instead, the goal of knowledge integrated from a range of specific scientific fields.

Spencer articulates a series of general truths about the world, including the facts that matter is indestructible, that there is continuity of motion and persistence of force, that the relations among forces persist, and that matter and motion are continually redistributed. By a process of deduction from these general laws, Spencer articulates a series of ideas that constitute his general evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary Theory

Spencer believes that all inorganic, organic, and superorganic (societal) phenomena undergo evolution and devolution, or dissolution. That is, phenomena undergo a process of evolution whereby matter becomes integrated and motion tends to dissipate. Phenomena also undergo a process of devolution in which motion increases and matter moves toward disintegration. Having deduced these general principles of evolution and dissolution from his overarching principles, Spencer then turns to specific areas in order to show that his theory of evolution (and devolution) holds inductively, that is, that "all orders do exhibit a progressive integration of Matter and concomitant loss of Motion"

(190g/1958:308).

The combination of induction and deduction leads Spencer to his "final" evolutionary formula:

Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.

(Spencer, 1902/1958:394)

Let us decompose this general perspective and examine each of the major elements of Spencer's evolutionary theory.

First. evolution involves progressive change from a less coherent to a more coherent form; in other words, it involves increasing integration. Second, accompanying increasing integration is the movement from homogeneity to more and more heterogeneity; in other words, evolution involves increasing differentiation. Third, there is a movement from confusion to order from indeterminacy to determined order, "an increase in the distinctness with which these parts are marked off from one another" (Spencer, 1902/1958:361); in other words, evolution involves movement from the indefinite to the definite. (In Chapter i5 we will see that Parsons developed a similar evolutionary theory in his later work.)

Thus, the three key elements of evolution are increasing integration, heterogeneity, and definiteness. More specifically, Spencer is concerned with these elements and his general theory of evolution as they apply to both structures and functions. At the most general level, Spencer associates structures with "matter" and sees them growing more integrated, heterogeneous, and definite. Functions are linked to "retained motion," and they, too, are seen as growing increasingly integrated, heterogeneous, and definite. We will have occasion to deal with Spencer's more concrete thoughts oil the evolution of functions and structures in his work on society.

Having outlined his general theory of evolution, Spencer turns to the issue of the reasons for the occurrence of evolution. First, Spencer argues that homogeneous phenomena are inherently unstable: "the absolutely homogeneous must lose its equilibrium; and the relatively homogeneous must lapse into the relatively less homogeneous" (1902/1958:426). One reason for this instability is that the different parts of a homogeneous system are constantly subjected to different forces, which tend to differentiate them from one another. Changes in one part of the once homogeneous system will inevitably result in changes in other parts, leading, in turn, to greater multiformity. A second factor in sequence, but not in importance, is the multiplication of effects. In Spencer's view, the multiplication of effects proceeds in a geometric manner. In other words, a small change in a once homogeneous system has increasingly ramifying effects. Thus, over time, the once homogeneous system grows increasingly heterogeneous. Third, Spencer discusses the effects of segregation on evolution. A sector becomes segregated from the others because of a likeness among its components, which are different from the components of other sectors. This segregation serves to maintain differences among the sectors, and this, in turn, furthers the multiplication of effects when one sector is exposed to and incorporates the distinguishing characteristics of other sectors.

Given that evolution is an inevitable process, the issue becomes: Where is evolution headed? While en route to their end state, phenomena move through a series of transitional states that can be described as "moving equilibria," and the end state of the process is a new equillibrium. It could be argued that we arc moving to "a state of quiescence," and it could then be asked: "Are we not manifestly progressing toward omnipresent death" through the dissipation of moving forces (Spencer, 1902/1958:508)?Spencer responds negatively to this question, arguing that we are moving toward universal life through new stages in the evolutionary process. He does, however, posit an end state of the evolutionary process: "Evolution can end only in the establishment of the greatest perfection and the most complete happiness" (Spencer, 1902/1958:511).Spencer obviously has great faith in the evolutionary process, and its ultimate state of perfection gives him a standard by which he can assess all other steps in the evolutionary process.

In spite of his faith in evolution, Spencer recognizes, in a dialectical fashion, that the process of dissolution complements the evolutionary process and periodically leads to its undoing. The dissolution process is likely to occur when evolution has ended and the evolved phenomenon has begun to decay.

Evolution constitutes the focus of Spencer's work in a variety of realms, but our concern is with the evolution of human societies in terms of their growth and with the evolution of structures and functions. Following Spencer's approach, we will look at the evolution of society in general. Spencer's rationale for devoting so much attention to the evolution of society (and its institutions) is his view that a fully adequate understanding of human social relations requires an understanding of their evolution (as well as their cycles and dissolution).

SOCIOLOGY

Defining the Science of Sociology

Given Spencer's focus on evolution, he defines "the study of Sociology as the study of Evolution in its most complex form" (187311961:350). To put it another way, sociology is "the natural history of societies" or, more specifically, "an order among those structural and functional changes which societies pass through" (Spencer, 1873/1961:63J04).However, Spencer does not restrict sociology to historical societies but also accepts study of the ways in which contemporary organizations and institutions "me severally related to other phenomena of their respective times-the political institutions, the class-distinctions, the family arrangements, the modes of distribution and degrees of intercourse between localities, the amounts of knowledge, the religious beliefs, the morals, the sentiments, the customs, the ideas" (1873/1961:120). But while Spencer sanctions the need for contemporaneous research, he feels that the true meaning of his work is found only when it is placed in a historical, evolutionary context. However, whether sociological research focuses on historical or contemporary issues, it is clear that Spencer's sociology concentrates Iargely on macro-level social phenomena (social aggregates)-societies, social structures, social institutions-as well as the functions of each.

Spencer (1873/1961:II5) shares with Comte the view that sociology should deal with social questions in the same scientific manner in which we address issues in the natural sciences. Furthermore, Spencer, like Comte. sees sociology, especially in its evolutionary concerns, as the most complex of sciences.

Although Spencer sees sociology as a (complex) science, he recognizes that it is not an exact science, but he rhetorically wonders, how many sciences are exact sciences? To be a science, in Spencer's view, a field of study need only consist of generalizations (laws) and interpretations based on those generalizations. Sociology seeks laws of social phenomena in the same way that the natural sciences seek the laws of natural phenomena. "Either society has laws or it has not. If it has not, them can be no order,no certainty, no system in its phenomena, if it has, then are they like the other laws of the universe-sure, inflexible, ever active, and having no exceptions?" (Spencer, 1850/1954:40). Although sociology and other sciences seek to make predictions about the future on the basis of laws, in most cases all sciences must be satisfied with only the most general predictions.

Legitimizing Sociology In endeavoring to lay the groundwork for his kind of scientific sociology, Spencer confronted the problem that many other early sociologists faced the need to legitimize the field. For example, he felt compelled to argue that laypeople lack the capacity to grasp the complex issues of concern to sociologists: one needs to be a trained sociologist in order to comprehend them. Because in their everyday lives they deal with the same issues that are of concern to sociologists, laypeople in Spencer's day, and to this day as well, are convinced, erroneously, that they can do as good a job of social analysis as trained sociologists can. Spencer also confronted the misplaced confidence of laypeople in their views and their hostility to sociologists by arguing that the incapacity of the layperson "is accompanied by extreme confidence of judgment on sociological questions, and a ridicule of those who, after long discipline, begin to perceive what there is to be understood, and how difficult is the right understanding of it" (1873/1961: I 15). As a result of these lay attitudes, Spencer saw many barriers to sociology's receiving the recognition it deserves. These include the fact that few laypeople will be able to grasp the complexity of sociology's subject matter, an unconsciousness on the part of laypeople that there are any such complex phenomena, the misplaced confidence of laypeople, and the fact that the minds of most laypeople are not adaptable and flexible enough to accept the new perspective offered by sociology.

Spencer felt that sociologists, in contrast to laypeople, require disciplined habits of thought and that those habits are to be derived from a careful study of other sciences.This need to study other sciences is buttressed by an argument similar to one made by Comte, that is, that the science of sociology encompasses the phenomena of concern in all other sciences. Spencer gave particular importance to the need for sociologists to be familiar with the fields of biology and psychology.

Sociology and Biology Spencer saw three basic linkages between biology and sociology. First, he believed that all social actions ate determined by the actions of individuals and that those actions conform to the basic laws of life in general. Thus, to understand social actions, the sociologist must know the basic laws of life, and it is biology that he]ps us comprehend those laws. Second, there are powerful analogies between sociology and biology. That is, society as a whole, like the living body, is characterized by, among other things, growth, structure, and function. Thus an understanding of the biology of the living organism, which after all is far easier to study than the social organism, offers many keys to understanding society. Spencer concludes, "There can be no rational apprehension of the truths of Sociology until there has been reached a rational apprehension of the troths of Biology" (1873/1961:305). Third, a kind of natural progression and linkage exist between the two fields because humans are the "terminal" problem for biology and the starting point for sociology.

A more specific similarity between biology and sociology is the operation of the survival-of-the-fittest process in both living and social organisms. Spencer felt that survival of the fittest occurs in both the biological and the social realms and that the lessons of biology from the natural world are that there should be no interference with this process in the social world.