Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life

"The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903) was a colossus of the Victorian age. His works ranked alongside those of Darwin and Marx in the development of disciplines as wide ranging as sociology, anthropology, political theory, philosophy and psychology. His unique system of knowledge, which bridged the gap between empiricism and metaphysics, offered modern and scientific answers to questions about the meaning of life and made him a world philosopher of the late nineteenth century. In this major study of Spencer, the first for over thirty years, Mark Francis provides an authoritative and meticulously researched intellectual biography of this remarkable man.