Publisher's description:
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.Frank M. Turner, Yale University:
A stunning revelation of a personality and thinker about whom even most well informed Victorianists evaluate largely from misinformation. This book presents an entirely new understanding of Spencer. Scholars from a number of fields – philosophy, literature, history, and history of science – will quite simply never be able to think of Spencer as they have before. Wonderfully and persuasively revisionist, backed up by superb research, this will be the book on Spencer for the present and next generation.
