The Synthetic Philosopher: A Critical Overview of Herbert Spencer's Life and Work

by John Arthur Thomson, David Christopher Lane (Editor)

This is a delightfully insightful overview of the life and work of Herbert Spencer, the famous evolutionist of the 19th century. Although Spencer's thought is not without controversy, he was nevertheless responsible for a number of important contributions, not the least of which is his coining of the term "survival of the fittest", which Charles Darwin (on the advice of Alfred Russel Wallace) used as a placeholder for his more generalistic term, "natural selection".

Paperback

Published August 5, 2020

About the author

Sir John Arthur Thomson FRSE LLD was a Scottish naturalist who authored several notable books and was an expert on soft corals. He was the second son of Isabella Landsborough (1828 - 1905) and the Rev. Arthur Thomson (1823 - 1881), a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, originally from Muckhart.

He studied natural history at the University of Edinburgh graduating with an MA in 1880. He had already established a reputation as a worthy scientist within his first years and in 1887, aged 25, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Patrick Geddes, J. T. Cunningham, Sir John Murray and Robert McNair Ferguson.

He taught at the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College from 1893 until 1899 then University of Aberdeen from 1899 until 1930 as Regius Professor of Natural History (Aberdeen), the year he was knighted. His popular works sought to reconcile science and religion. Thomson's Outline of Science, published in 1922, sold more than one hundred thousand copies in five years.

Reviews

[Dan Bouchelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

The primary benefit of this book was helping me understand why Spencer’s outsized influence in his day faded quickly and he is hardly known today.