Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.
Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. He was an enthusiastic exponent of evolution and even wrote about evolution before Darwin did. As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, biology, sociology, and psychology. During his lifetime he achieved tremendous authority, mainly in English-speaking academia. The only other English philosopher to have achieved anything like such widespread popularity was Bertrand Russell, and that was in the 20th century. Spencer was "the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
Spencer is best known for coining the expression "survival of the fittest", which he did in Principles of Biology (1864), after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. This term strongly suggests natural selection, yet as Spencer extended evolution into realms of sociology and ethics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer
A selection from the essays in the first and second series of Essays: scientific, political and speculative." London, 1858-63
The philosophy of style.--Over-legislation.--The morals of trade.--Personal beauty.--Representative government.--Prison-ethics.--Railway morals and railway policy.--Gracefulness.--State-tamperings with money and banks.--Parliamentary reform: the dangers and the safeguards"
