The Practice of Spencerian Science: Patrick Geddes's Biosocial Program, 1876–1889

Abstract

From the Victorian era to our own, critics of Herbert Spencer have portrayed his science-based philosophical system as irrelevant to the concerns of practicing scientists. Yet, as a number of scholars have recently argued, an extraordinary range of reformist and experimental projects across the human and life sciences took their bearings from Spencer's work. This essay examines Spencerian science as practiced by the biologist, sociologist, and town planner Patrick Geddes (1854-1932). Through a close examination of his experimental natural history of the late 1870s and early 1880s, his wider writings on the evolutionary process in the 1880s, and his efforts later in that decade to improve the slums of Edinburgh, this essay reveals Geddes's deep, unifying, and energizing commitment to Spencer's program. Recapturing that commitment can not only help historians rethink Spencerian science as practice but also suggest ways of overcoming the dichotomy between elite ideas and practical activity that bedevils much contemporary historiography of science.

The regional survey movement and popular autoethnography in early 20th-century Britain

“…The degree of similarity in Geddes's and Haddon's early careers is striking: both received their initial training in the 1870s, at Michael Foster's Cambridge physiology lab, where they imbibed a Spencerian conception of the organism as a bundle of forces that would be variously conserved and released in the course of adapting to its environment (Kuklick, 1998;Renwick, 2009). Both would then take up the opportunity of studying those organisms in situ, at some of the many field stations then popping up across the continent.…”

Lester Ward and Patrick Geddes in early American and British sociology

“…Geddes eventually became Huxley’s lecture assistant, providing demonstrations of fossil and botanical specimens. However, Geddes soon shifted away from Huxley’s brand of evolutionary theory and became more inclined to that of Herbert Spencer, who was one of Huxley’s public nemeses (Meller, 1993; Renwick, 2009). Geddes, though proficient in the most advanced theories and practices of embryology, became more interested in the direct study of sociology and living, rather than fossilized, organisms.…”

“…However, Spencer did not see societal evolution proceeding in an inherently linear direction, as in Comte’s stage theory of history, since society could just as easily revert and de-differentiate (Olsen, 2008: 207–76; Smith, 1997: 421–91). Spencer did, however, determine that industrial society should be left to its own devices and that state interference in the process of industrial integration would interfere in the logical unfolding of naturally efficient system formations (Renwick, 2009).…”

Doing ‘Deep Big History’: Race, landscape and the humanity of H J Fleure (1877–1969)

“…For now, it is sufficient to note that his public influence was exerted not least by means of the small, reasonably priced books (often reaching more than one edition) that he wrote for a range of different publishers from 1918 until 1951. He worked closely with biologists and sociologists – and individuals who were both, such as Patrick Geddes (Renwick, 2009) – who helped him explore the significance of ‘region’ to his understanding of human history and to use this as means of managing the relationships between rural and urban, tradition and modernity in both his public and professional life (Gruffudd, 1994).…”