Herbert Spencer(1820-1903) - English philosopher and sociologist; he shared Comte's ideas about social statics and social dynamics. According to his teaching, society is similar to a biological organism and can be represented as a whole, consisting of interconnected and interdependent parts. Similar to human body consists of organs - kidneys, lungs, heart, etc., society consists of various institutions, such as family, religion, law. Each element is irreplaceable because it performs its own socially necessary function.

In the social organism, Spencer identifies an internal subsystem that is in charge of the preservation of the organism and adaptation to conditions. environment, and external, the functions of which are the regulation and control of the relationship of the organism with the external environment. There is also an intermediate subsystem responsible for communication between the first two. Society as a whole, according to Spencer, is systemic in nature and cannot be reduced to a simple sum of actions of individuals.

According to the degree of integration, Spencer distinguishes between simple, complex, doubly complex societies; distributes them according to levels of development between two poles, the lower of which is a military society, and the upper one is industrial. Military societies are characterized by the presence unified system faith, and cooperation between individuals is achieved through violence and coercion; here the state dominates the individuals, the individual exists for the state. , where dominated, are characterized by democratic principles, a variety of belief systems and voluntary cooperation of individuals. Here the individual does not exist for the state, but the state exists for individuals. Spencer thinks social development as a movement from military societies to industrial ones, although in a number of cases he considers the reverse movement possible - to military societies, for example, in the context of socialist ideas. However, as societies develop, they become more diverse and industrial society exists in many varieties.

Sociology of G. Spencer

Herbert Spencer(1820-1903) - English philosopher and sociologist, one of the founders of positivism. Worked as an engineer for railway. Became the successor of positivism (philosophical and sociological); his ideas were also influenced by D. Hume and J. S. Mill, Kantianism.

The philosophical basis of his sociology is formed, first of all, by the position that the world is divided into the knowable (the world of phenomena) and the unknowable (“thing in itself”, the world of essences). The goal of philosophy, science, and sociology is the knowledge of similarities and differences, analogies, etc. in the phenomena of things to our consciousness. The essence, unknowable by human consciousness, is the cause of all phenomena, about which philosophy, religion, and science conjecture. The basis of the world, Spencer believed, is formed by universal evolution, which is a continuous interaction of two processes: the integration of bodily particles and their disintegration, leading to their balance and stability of things.

Spencer is the founder of organic sociology, according to which society arises as a result of a long evolution of living and itself is an organism similar to a living one. It consists of organs, each of which performs certain functions. Every society has an inherent function of survival in the natural and public environment, which has the character of competition - the struggle, as a result of which the most adapted societies are called. The evolution of nature (inanimate and living) is an ascent from the simple to the complex, from the low-functional to the multifunctional, etc. Evolution, as an integrative process, is opposed by decomposition. The struggle of evolution and decomposition is the essence of the process movements in the world.

Social organisms are the pinnacle of natural evolution. Spencer gives examples of social evolution. Peasant farms are gradually united into large feudal systems. The latter, in turn, are united in the provinces. Provinces create kingdoms, and those turn into empires. All this is accompanied by the emergence of new governing bodies. As a result of the complication of social formations, the functions of the parts that form them change. For example, at the beginning of the evolutionary process, the family had reproductive, economic, educational, and political functions. But gradually they passed to specialized social bodies: the state, the church, the school, etc.

Each social organism, according to Spencer, consists of three main organs (systems): 1) production ( Agriculture, fishing, craft); 2) distribution (trade, roads, transport, etc.); 3) managerial (elders, state, church, etc.). An important role in social organisms is played by the management system, which determines goals, coordinates other organs, and mobilizes the population. It operates on the basis of fear of the living (state) and the dead (church). Thus, Spencer was one of the first to give a fairly clear structural and functional description of social organisms: countries, regions, settlements (cities and villages).

Spencer's Mechanism of Social Evolution

How is the evolution (slow development) of social organisms according to Spencer? First of all, due to population growth, as well as due to the unification of people in social groups and classes. People organize themselves into social systems either for the sake of protection and attack, resulting in "military types of societies", or for the production of commodities, resulting in "industrial societies". There is a constant struggle going on between these types of societies.

The mechanism of social evolution includes three factors:

people are initially unequal in their characters, abilities, living conditions, resulting in differentiation of roles, functions, power, property, prestige;
there is a tendency to increase the specialization of roles, the growth of social inequality (power, wealth, education);
society is divided into economic, political, national, religious, professional, etc. classes, which causes its destabilization and weakening.

With the help of the mechanism of social evolution, humanity goes through four stages of development:

simple and isolated from each other human societies in which people are engaged in approximately the same activity;
military societies, characterized by a temporary territory, division of labor, the leading role of a centralized political organization;
industrial societies, characterized by a permanent territory, constitution and system of laws;
civilizations that include nation states, federations of states, empires.

Central to this typology of societies is the dichotomy of military and industrial society. Below, this Spencer dichotomy is shown in tabular form (Table 1).

According to G. Spencer, at the first stage, the development of social science was under the complete control of theology, which remained the dominant type of knowledge and faith until about 1750. Then, as a result of the secularization of society, theology was denied the status of a privileged science, and this role passed to philosophy: not God, the priest, but the philosopher, the thinker began to be considered the source (and criterion) of true knowledge. At the end of the XVIII century. philosophers were replaced by scientists (natural scientists), who introduced into scientific circulation the empirical justification for the truth of knowledge, and not the authority of God or philosophy. They rejected the philosophical justification for the truth of knowledge as deductive speculation. As a result, a positivist theory of sociocognition emerged, which includes the following main provisions:

the objective world is given to a person in the form of sensory phenomena (sensations, perceptions, ideas), a person himself cannot penetrate into the essence of the objective world, but can only empirically describe these phenomena;
society is the result of the interaction of (a) the conscious activity of people and (b) objective natural factors;
social phenomena (facts) are qualitatively the same as natural phenomena, due to which the methods of natural scientific knowledge are applicable in sociological research;
society is like an animal organism, it has certain organs-systems that interact with each other;
the development of society is the result of an increase in the number of people, differentiation and integration of labor, the complication of former organs-systems and the emergence of new ones;
represents a genuine benefit for people, and the development of mankind directly depends on the development of science, including sociology;
social revolutions are a disaster for people, are the result of mismanagement of people, arising from ignorance of the laws of sociology;
for normal evolutionary development, leaders and leading classes must know sociology and be guided by it when making political decisions;
the task of sociology is to develop empirically substantiated universal laws social behavior to orient it towards the public good, a reasonable social order;
humanity is made up of different countries(and nations) that move along the same path, go through the same stages, and therefore obey the same laws.

Table 1. Military society versus industrial society

Features	military society	industrial society
Dominant Activity	Defense and conquest of territories	Peaceful production and exchange of goods and services
Integrative (unifying) principle	Tensions, tough sanctions	Free cooperation, agreements
Relations between individuals and states	State dominance, restriction of freedom	The state serves the needs of individuals
Relations between states and other organizations	State dominance	Dominance of private organizations
Political structure	Centralization, autocracy	Decentralization, democracy
Stratification	Status prescription, low mobility, closed society	Achieved status, high mobility, open society
Economic activity	Autarky, protectionism, self-sufficiency	Economic interdependence, free trade
Dominant values	Courage, discipline, submission, loyalty, patriotism	Initiative, ingenuity, independence, fruitfulness

Criticizing positivist knowledge, Hayek writes: “In accordance with the idea of the knowability of laws<...>the human mind is supposed to be able, so to speak, to look at itself from above and not only to understand the mechanism of its action from the inside, but also to observe its actions from the outside. The curiosity of such a statement, especially in Comte's formulation, is that, while it is openly recognized that the interaction of individual minds can lead to the emergence of something that is in a certain sense superior to the achievements available to an individual mind, this same individual mind, nevertheless, is declared not only capable of grasping the whole picture of human development and knowing the principles according to which it is carried out, but also capable of controlling this development and directing it, achieving in such a way that it proceeds more successfully than it would be without control.

Plan lectures

1. Biography, main works, theoretical origins of G. Spencer's ideas

2. The concept of evolutionism in the sociological concept of H. Spencer

3. G. Spencer's idea of sociology as a science

4. G. Spencer's teaching about society

5. Ethics G. Spencer

6. G. Spencer's idea of liberalism

1. Biography, main works, theoretical origins of G. Spencer's ideas.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)- English philosopher and sociologist, ideologist of social Darwinism.

The main works of G. Spencer: Social statics, "Basic Principles", "Foundations of Biology", "Foundations of Psychology", "Foundations of Ethics", "Foundations of Sociology". "Foundations of Sociology", "Sociology as a Subject of Study" (1873, Russian translation 1896).

Biography of G. Spencer. Born in the family of a teacher April 27, 1820 in Derby. Until the age of 13, due to poor health, he did not attend school. In 1833 he began to study at the University of Cambridge, but after completing a three-year preparatory course he went home and took up self-education. In the future, he never received any scientific degree and did not hold academic posts, which he did not regret at all.

As a youth, Spencer was more interested in mathematics and science than in the humanities. From 1837 he began working as an engineer on the construction of the railway. His outstanding abilities showed up even then: he invented a tool for measuring the speeds of locomotives. He soon realized that the profession he had chosen did not give him a solid financial position and did not satisfy his spiritual needs. In 1841 Spencer took a break from his engineering career and spent two years educating himself. In 1843 he again returned to his former profession, heading the engineering bureau. Having received in 1846 a patent for the sawing and planing machine he invented, Spencer unexpectedly cut short his successful technical career and went into scientific journalism, while working on his own works.

In 1848 he became assistant editor of The Economist, and in 1850 he completed his main work, Social Statics. This work was given to the author very hard - he began to suffer from insomnia. In the future, health problems only multiplied and resulted in a series of nervous breakdowns. In 1853 he received an inheritance from his uncle, which made him financially independent and allowed him to become a free scientist. After leaving his journalistic post, he devoted himself entirely to the development and publication of his works.

His project was to write and publish by subscription a multi-volume Synthetic Philosophy, an encyclopedic system of all scientific knowledge. The first experience was unsuccessful: the publication of the series had to be stopped due to the overwork of the philosopher and the lack of interest among readers. He was on the verge of poverty. He was saved by an acquaintance with an American publisher who undertook to publish his works in the United States, where Spencer gained wide popularity earlier than in England. Gradually, his name became known, the demand for his books increased, and by 1875 he fully covered the losses and began to profit from the publication of his works. During this period, such of his works as the two-volume Principles of Biology, the three books of the Foundations of Psychology and the three-volume Foundations of Sociology were published. His numerous works soon became very popular and published in large numbers in all countries of the world (including Russia)

The central idea of all his work was the idea of evolution. By evolution, he understood the transition from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, i.e. into a social whole, where, however, this whole society cannot and must not absorb the individual. Spencer showed that evolution is an integral feature of the entire world around us and is observed not only in all areas of nature, but also in science, art, religion and philosophy.

Hence, Spencer considers the transition from a society in which the individual is entirely subordinate to the social whole to a state in which the social organism or society "serves" its constituent individuals as an essential dimension of social progress.

The main difference between social structures, according to Spencer, is whether the cooperation of people in achieving a common goal is voluntary or forced.

Theoretical origins of G. Spencer's ideas. Spencer shared Comte's main view, according to which sociology, directly adjacent to biology, constitutes with it the "physics of organized bodies" and considers society as a kind of organism. True, Spencer places psychology between biology and sociology, but this did not have a noticeable effect on his idea of society. Spencer disagreed with Comte's idea that the entire social mechanism rests on opinions and that ideas govern the world, bring upheavals in the world. “The world,” according to Spencer, “is controlled and changed through the senses, for which ideas serve only as guides. The social organism rests, after all, not on opinions, but almost entirely on characters. Thus, we can note that Spencer, like Comte, stands for a psychological explanation of the "social mechanism", although this does not fit with his analogy of society with a biological organism. An attempt to explain the phenomena occurring in social life by biological analogies is largely associated with Darwin's theory. Appearing in the middle of the 19th century, it had a strong influence on sociology, giving rise to various biologizing sociological concepts, including social Darwinist ones. The essence of the latter was that their authors transferred to society and brought to their logical conclusion the principles of natural selection and the struggle for existence, seeing in them a universal model of the evolutionary process.

Especially valuable for the study of society, understanding the origin of many social institutions was the application of evolutionary theory. The evolutionary approach to society is important because each phenomenon is studied in its development.

The revolution brought about by Darwin's evolutionary theory in biology and embraced by many sociologists has greatly strengthened the historical-comparative method of studying cultural and social forms life.

Herbert Spencer the main ideas of the English sociologist and philosopher are summarized in this article.

Spencer main ideas briefly

Herbert Spencer is the founder of the organic trend in sociology. He viewed society as a living, biological organism. The main works of the thinker are "Political Institutions", "Basic Principles" and "The System of Synthetic Philosophy" in 3 volumes.

The social world is a direct extension of the natural world. The world itself evolves in 3 stages - pre-organic, organic, non-organic.
Created the theory of society. According to it, there is a scientific pyramid: mathematics - biology - psychology - sociology - the development of the human psyche. At the peak of the pyramid, the formation abstract thinking and the concept of abstract entities. According to Spencer, society is an essence, a totality in relation to the individual, a reality that is not reducible to people and is self-sufficient in itself. Society is a living organism. Its main characteristics are: progressive differentiation of structure and structure, continuous growth, increase in internal connectedness and mass (progressive integration), progressive differentiation of functions. Society is progressing in the direction of increasing certainty and diversity, volume and connectedness.
He singled out the basic subsystems of society, functionally united. This:

The digestive system is an industrial organization of society, a productive activity. It is determined by geology, ecology, geography, demography.
The distribution system is the communicative means of society (roads, means of communication, agents, regional communications) and the system of division of labor.
The regulatory system is a spending and ruling system that is based on cooperation. This system arises as a result of social wars. Components of the regulatory system: army, finance, government, banks. Over time, the system becomes more complex.

According to Spencer, there are basic institutions: church institutions, ritual, family, politics. The function of a church institution is to unite society through the implementation of rules of conduct and rites of worship. When ritual control is replaced by moral control, the church loses its meaning. Rite is the primary form of political and military control, older than ecclesiastical or political control. Arises for the cohesion of society. Family forms are endogamy and exogamy. Forms of marriage - polygamy (in a military society), polyandry, monogamy (in an industrial society). Political institutions and organizations are organizations that are associated with a form of political control in a particular territory.
He singled out 2 types of society - military and industrial. The military society is engaged in the conquest of territories and new labor force. Its economy is built on forced labor. In it, the main political institution is the state. Industrial society is characterized by free cooperation on the basis of a mutually beneficial contract. The basis of its economy is a system of division of labor based on trade and industrial interactions. The main features of an industrial society are freedom of conscience, geographical freedom of political views and of the individual, an army for the people.
Philosophy studies the phenomena of a sensual nature, amenable to systematization.
the main task philosophical science reconciliation of religion and science.

We hope that from this article you have learned what are the main ideas of Herbert Spencer.

Biography

The greatest scientific value is his research in sociology, including his other two treatises: "Social Statics" ( Social Statics, ) and Sociological Research ( The Study of Sociology, ) and eight volumes containing systematized sociological data, "Descriptive Sociology" ( Descriptive Sociology,-). Spencer is the founder of the "organic school" in sociology. Society, from his point of view, is an evolving organism, similar to a living organism considered by biological science. Societies can organize and control their own processes of adaptation, and then they develop towards militaristic regimes; they can also allow free and flexible adaptation and then turn into industrialized states.

However, the inexorable course of evolution makes adaptation "not an accident, but a necessity." Spencer considered the social philosophy of laissez-faire to be a consequence of the concept of the cosmic force of evolution. The principle of individualism underlying this philosophy is clearly stated in the Principles of Ethics:

Every person is free to do what he wants, as long as he does not violate the equal freedom of any other person.

Social evolution is a process of increasing "individualization". In "Autobiography" autobiography, 2 vol., 1904) is an ultra-individualist in character and origin, a man of extraordinary self-discipline and diligence, but almost devoid of a sense of humor and romantic aspirations. He opposed revolutions and had a sharply negative attitude towards socialist ideas. believed that human society, like organic world develops gradually, evolutionarily. He was an open opponent of education for the poor, considered the democratization of education harmful.

Offered an elegant solution to the chicken and egg paradox: "A chicken is just a way in which one egg produces another egg," thus reducing one of the objects. This is quite in line with modern evolutionary biology, popularized in particular by The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

The concept of social institutions

Society consists of 3 relatively autonomous parts (systems of "organs"):

supporting- production of necessary products
distributive(distributive) - the division of goods based on the division of labor (provides a link between the parts of the social organism)
regulatory(state) - organization of parts on the basis of their subordination to the whole.

Types of societies

Military type of society- military conflicts and extermination or enslavement of the defeated by the winner; centralized control. The state intervenes in industry, trade and spiritual life, instills monotony, passive obedience, lack of initiative, interferes with natural adaptation to the requirements of the environment. Government intervention not only does not bring any benefit, but is even downright harmful.

Personal rights

Spencer's list of individual rights:

Spencer defended "the right of every man to go about his business as he pleases, whatever his occupation may be, so long as it does not violate the freedom of others." Political rights - are needed in order to protect personal rights. “Political rights must be so distributed that not only individuals but also classes cannot oppress each other.” However, for all his liberality, Spencer was against granting political rights to women.

Criticism

Critics contend that Spencer's views provided a "scientific" front for racial prejudice. Darwin's theory of evolution was misinterpreted by Spencer as a description of intellectual and moral progress. On the basis of his doctrine of social Darwinism, Spencer came to the conclusion that non-white races are on the evolutionary ladder below the Europeans. Spencer's views contributed to the development of such inhumane practices as the forced sterilization of criminals and "feeble-minded". The ideology of "inferior races" was used by the Nazis to justify the murder of Slavs, Jews, Gypsies and

Herbert Spencer - English sociologist, one of the founders of evolutionism, whose ideas were widely popular in late XIX century. The sociological views of the scientist were influenced by the views of Saint-Simon and Comte, and the development of the idea of evolution was influenced by Lamarck, K. Baer, Smith, Malthus. He was closely acquainted with J. Eliot, J. Lewis, T. Huxley, J. S. Mill and J. Tyndall, in last years life with B. Webb.

Spencer turned down an offer to get an education at Cambridge, he studied science on his own. He worked as an associate editor at The Economist. By 1870, he took up sociology, having left work and received a large inheritance, he traveled with lectures around the world, although he did not read the works of other scientists, he communicated a lot with people of his rank. There were many errors in his writings, which gradually became more and more obvious. During several trips to France, he had the opportunity to personally meet O. Comte, whose work he respected the most.

Sociology of Spencer

The features of Spencer's science are the ideas of progress, evolutionism; And further development Comte's positivism. Foundations of Spencer's Sociology:

1. Evolutionism. In his Foundations of Biology, Spencer develops the ideas of Darwinism in a sociological sense. In his opinion, the strongest survive in society, the existence of rivalry and struggle is natural.

2. Organismic theory. Society is like some kind of biological organism in its structure and functioning.

Evolution according to Spencer is a continuous growth of science from simple undifferentiated homogeneity to a complex of differentiated heterogeneity.

It was Spencer who introduced the concepts of differentiation and integration.

Differentiation is the emergence from a certain homogeneity of diversity; division into forms and steps; the emergence in the body in the process of development of morphological and functional differences.

Integration is the emergence of integrity, unity in the system, based on the complementarity and interdependence of individual elements.

Evolutionism

Spencer shared the opinion of O. Comte that social physics is an exact science adjacent to biology, constituting with it unified physics organized bodies. Spencer tried to explain the phenomena occurring in society with the help of a biological analogy. For example, he transferred the principles of natural selection to society, considering them as a universal way of human existence.

Spencer distinguishes 2 types of society - military and industrial. A classic example of a military society is Sparta, its distinctive features are the subordination of internal structures to the desire for the struggle for survival and aggression; the dominance of the collective over the individual, the hierarchy of the structure of the management of society, discipline, conservatism.

England can be called an example of an industrial society, its features are opposite to a military society, that is, decentralized management of society, pluralism, protection and preservation of human rights, innovation and development of society, expansion of the area of private life.

Spencer, in describing industrial society, relied on scientific foresight, an assumption of how society will look like in the future, because during the years of the scientist's life, industry had just begun to develop.

Societies can organize and control their own processes of adaptation, and then they develop towards militaristic regimes; they can also allow free and flexible adaptation and then turn into industrialized states.

Spencer also divides societies into:

1. Simple;

2. Complex (there is a hierarchy, the structure of the division of labor);

3. Double complexity (government, everything lives according to the laws);

4. Triple difficulty.

Another typology of societies according to Spencer:

1. Nomadic;

2. Semi-settled;

3. Settled.

Evolution human society does not differ from other evolutionary processes occurring in nature. Sociology will live as a science only when, Spencer believed, when it recognizes the idea of an evolutionary natural law. If sociology believes that the development of society is contrary to the laws of nature, then it cannot be called a science. Spencer was one of the first to draw attention to the division of labor, and began to divide production into the simplest processes.

Social evolution, according to the thinker, is a process of increasing individualization, movement from society to man.

Social progress, like any other types of progress, is not unilinear, it spreads and diverges, and emerging groups differ more and more significantly, genera and stereotypes of societies arise.

Spencer's evolutionary theory, thanks to the inclusion of factors of stagnation and regression, becomes undoubtedly more flexible, although it loses its integrity.

Organism theory

Spencer considered obvious the similarity of society with a biological organism, both in structure and functioning. The similarity was in the following factors:

1. Growth. Both the organism and society tend to grow and develop.

2. Society consists of individuals as an organism - of cells.

3. Complication. Society has a structure similar to an organism - from an individual (cell) to institutions (internal organs) and to the whole society as a whole (organism).

4. Differentiation. The division of individuals into classes and groups, their desire to unite with their own kind is similar to the division of cells into different tissues.

5. Interaction. Individuals interact with each other like cells that exchange various chemicals.

However, there are also differences:

1. Unlike a biological organism, which has a specific form, the elements of society are scattered in space, have significant autonomy (freedom of movement, at least, they can leave one society and join another).

2. There is no single organ in society that concentrates the ability to feel and think.

3. An important difference between a society and an organism is the spatial mobility of structural elements.

4. The organism consists of parts and exists for the sake of the whole unity, and the whole in society - for the sake of parts.

Spencer solved the problem of the relationship between the individual and society by referring to their interaction. He assumed that in the early stages of evolution, the biological essence of a person determines the properties of the social aggregate, and in the future, the properties of the whole play a decisive role in the evolution of society.

After differentiation, society needs to coordinate the activities of individual groups. According to Spencer, the Church should be separated from the state. In a society for normal evolution, the following systems must exist:

1. Supporting (production of necessary products);

2. Distribution (distribution of benefits based on the division of labor);

3. Regulatory (organization of parts based on their subordination to the whole).

It was Herbert Spencer who first introduced the concept of a social institution into sociology.

A social institution is a mechanism for self-organization of the joint life of people. The scientist identified the groups social institutions:

1. Domestic (family, marriage, upbringing problems - reproduce the stages of family evolution);

2. Ritual (otherwise called Ritual, or Ceremonial, their essence is rituals, customs, traditions. Regulate everyday behavior of people);

3. Political (political organization and class division of society. Associated with the transfer of intra-group conflicts to the sphere of conflicts between groups);

4. Church (ensures the integration of society);

5. Professional (appear on the basis of the division of labor and the emergence of professions. They unite people into groups according to professional characteristics) and industrial (industrial. Support the production structure of society);

6. Rights (was added later).

The values of institutions increase in the process of transition from a military type of society to an industrial one. Industrial institutions are beginning to play a particularly important role, assuming an ever greater part of social functions and regulating labor relations.

The scientist believed that conflicts and wars played essential role in the formation of the political and class structure of society. The forces that create the state are war and labor, and in the early stages of evolution, military actions were decisive, since it is the need to defend and attack that most of all unites society and disciplines it. At the next stages of evolution, labor (social production) acted as a unifying force, and direct violence gives way to internal self-restraint.

Spencer's theory of social institutions is an attempt at a systematic study of society. The concept of institutions reproduces

the image of society by analogy with biological organisms, for example, money is likened to blood particles

Spencer introduced the term "superorganism", which emphasized the autonomy of the individual from society.

Spencer in his scientific papers relied on empirical bases of analogy and historical data. In the course of his reasoning, he discovered that among the entire history of mankind there is no history of "the people", only the history of kings, churches, etc. It was under him that the concept of a “new” history appeared - concerning the people too. Content itself historical process is presented as a gradual transition from mechanical coercion to organic association based on common interests.

Spencer was never able to overcome the dilemma of realism and nominalism, on the one hand emphasizing the special role of "human nature", and on the other hand, referring to the action of the artificial environment, supra-individual forces, the social organism.

Spencer postulates:

1. Average level the development of society is determined by the average level of development of its members (that is, from the "ruling");

2. The law of survival of the strongest and best in society explains the existence of competition and struggle between individuals, makes it a natural and integral part of the evolution of society.