''Social Statics, or The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed'' is an 1851 book by the British polymath
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression " survival of the fi ...
. The book was published by John Chapman of
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
In the book, he uses the term "fitness" in applying his ideas of
Lamarckian
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
evolution to society, saying for example that "It is clear that any being whose constitution is to be moulded into fitness for new conditions of existence must be placed under those conditions. Or, putting the proposition specifically—it is clear that man can become adapted to the social state, only by being retained in the social state. This granted, it follows that as man has been, and is still, deficient in those feelings which, by dictating just conduct, prevent the perpetual antagonism of individuals and their consequent disunion, some artificial agency is required by which their union may be maintained. Only by the process of adaptation itself can be produced that character which makes social equilibrium spontaneous."
Despite its commonly being attributed to this book, it was not until his ''Principles of Biology'' of 1864 that Spencer coined the phrase "
survival of the fittest", which he would later apply to economics and biology. This could be described as a key tenet of so-called
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
, though Spencer and his book were not an advocate thereof.
Reaction
Economist
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian ...
called ''Social Statics'' "the greatest single work of
libertarian political philosophy ever written."
[ Doherty, Brian, '' Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement'', pg. 246]
In ''
Lochner v. New York,'' justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...
, dissenting from the Supreme Court's holding that state legislation forbidding bakers from working more than ten hours a day or sixty hours a week violated the
Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by infringing on the individual's
liberty of contract, famously wrote: "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics."
References
External links
online copy* {{librivox book , title=Social Statics, author=Spencer
1851 non-fiction books
Libertarian books
Herbert Spencer