Long 19th c. · 1820–1903
Who influenced Herbert Spencer?
Influences
Evolution applied to society and mind: the synthetic philosophy of the age.
Herbert Spencer was influenced by Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin. That is 2 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Smithsonian Institution from United States, No restrictions See the whole map
Who was Herbert Spencer?
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his Principles of Biology (1864), after reading Darwin. He saw evolution as the progressive development of everything, from the physical world and living organisms to the human mind and society, and also accepted Lamarckism.
He wrote on ethics, religion, economics, politics, biology, sociology and psychology and in the late 19th century was perhaps the most famous intellectual in Europe. His reputation then fell sharply: in 1937 Talcott Parsons asked, "Who now reads Spencer?"
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Herbert Spencer?
2 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
- Auguste Comte 1798–1857
- Charles Darwin 1809–1882
The line of teachers behind Herbert Spencer
The longest documented line of influence ending at Herbert Spencer runs 18 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from Herbert Spencer
Indirect influences
Contemporaries of Herbert Spencer
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Herbert Spencer, with no direct line between them.
- Friedrich Engels 1820–1895
- Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
- Karl Marx 1818–1883
- Rudolf Hermann Lotze 1817–1881
- Thomas Henry Huxley 1825–1895
- Mikhail Bakunin 1814–1876
- Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855
- Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910
Herbert Spencer by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 2
- Direct followers
- 0
- Thinkers upstream
- 63
- Thinkers downstream
- 0
- Wikipedia languages
- 82 — #16 of 47 among 19th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about Herbert Spencer
- Who influenced Herbert Spencer?
- Auguste Comte and Charles Darwin.
- Who did Herbert Spencer influence?
- No later thinker on this map is recorded as drawing directly on Herbert Spencer.
- When did Herbert Spencer live?
- 1820–1903. The map files Herbert Spencer under the long 19th century.
- How rare is the Herbert Spencer card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Herbert Spencer in 82 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 19th-century philosophers
- Karl Marx 1818–1883
- Charles Darwin 1809–1882
- Leo Tolstoy 1828–1910
- Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
- Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900
- Georg W. F. Hegel 1770–1831
- Friedrich Engels 1820–1895
- Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855