The Principles of Biology
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~200,000 words · 958 passages
Cite this work
- APAHerbert Spencer. (n.d.). The Principles of Biology. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-principles-of-biology
- MLAHerbert Spencer. The Principles of Biology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-principles-of-biology.
- ChicagoHerbert Spencer. The Principles of Biology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-principles-of-biology.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Biology within Spencer's system: life defined as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external ones, with growth, reproduction and heredity read by that criterion.
Context and history
Published between 1864 and 1867. Here the phrase 'survival of the fittest' appears for the first time; Spencer coined it after reading Darwin. Darwin eventually adopted it in the fifth edition of the Origin of Species, and it has been credited to him ever since; it is Spencer's. The rest of the book depends on a mechanism of heredity that would turn out to be false, which is why it reads more as a document than as biology.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
force falling on units that are but little dissimilar does not readily segregate them ; but that it readily segregates them if they are widely dissimilar. Thus, these two extreme contrasts, the one between physical mobilities, and the other between chemical activities, fulfil, in the highest degree, a certain further condition to facility of differentiation and in-, tegration, § 2. Among the binary combinations of these four chief organic elements, we find a molecular mobility much less than that of these elements themselves ; at the same time that it is much greater than that of binary compounds in general. Of the two products formed by the union of oxygen with carbon, the first, called carbonic oxide, which contains one atom of carbon to one of oxygen (expressed by the symbol C 0), is an incondensible gas ; and the second 6 THE DATA OF lUOLOGY. carbonic acid, containing an additional atom of oxygen (C O2) assumes a liquid form only under a pressure of nearly forty atmospheres. The several compounds of oxygen with