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Herbert Spencer: Biology, Sociology, and Cosmic Evolution

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Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Sciences ((SOSC,volume 18))

Abstract

This paper is a case study in the constitutive role of two metaphors, the social organism and the struggle for life, in the thought of Herbert Spencer. It deals with the relationship between biology and the social sciences; but only in a limited sense is it a study of the transfer of one idea (“the social organism”) from biology to the social sciences, and of the transfer of another idea (“struggle or competition”) from the social sciences to biology and back again. It is, rather, a study of the common roots of these images in Spencer’s thought. Like any story, this one, too, has a moral: namely, not everything that looks like a metaphor is really a metaphor. What are metaphors to us or to one author are not necessarily so to another; in some cases, metaphors can perform their functions (illustrative, heuristic, constitutive, affective, persuasive, didactic, argumentative, etc.) exactly because the author who uses them presents them as literal descriptions, and believes them to be. Finally, to the numerous functions of metaphors recognized so far we should perhaps add another one: the moral function, as the role played by a metaphor in a discourse is often better explained by its moral context than its conceptual context. All this can seem obscure, but it will become clear if the reader is patient enough to read this paper through.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Calabrio, Italy

    Antonello La Vergata

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  1. Antonello La Vergata
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  1. University of Bielefeld, Germany

    Sabine Maasen  & Peter Weingart  & 

  2. Harvard University, USA

    Everett Mendelsohn

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La Vergata, A. (1995). Herbert Spencer: Biology, Sociology, and Cosmic Evolution. In: Maasen, S., Mendelsohn, E., Weingart, P. (eds) Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors. Sociology of the Sciences, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0673-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0673-3_9

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-0251-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-0673-3

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