Added to your basket:
The Study of Sociology. [The International Scientific Series].

Checkout now

First edition thus, the first American appearance of the sociological portion of Spencer’s ‘philosophical system’, which commenced in 1860, and thus the first appearance in America of his foundational system of sociology, which unified Darwinian evolution and social science, famous for introducing the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ to human biology.

Spencer (1920–1903) coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’ in his 1864 Principles of Biology after reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Spencer acknowledges the instigation of Edward Livingston Youmans that saw the appearance of this edition in agreement with the publisher William Henry Appleton; a partnership which saw the works of numerous scientists and sociologists first published in America.

The Study of Sociology was used by William Graham Sumner of Yale when he taught the first course in sociology in the United States in 1879, over the objections of Yale’s President, which led to a split within the faculty. Sumner (and Spencer) won.

You may also be interested in...

COMTE, Auguste, and Albert CROMPTON (editor).

Confessions and Testament of August Comte: and his correspondence with Clotilde de Vaux.

First edition in English of Comte’s Confessions, which first appeared with his ‘testament’ in French in 1884. These take the form of ‘Twelve Saint Clotildes’, a series of annual confessions which he recited to his muse’s grave. Clotilde de Vaux was a divorced woman whom Comte met in 1844 through one of his students; their first recorded letter was written in 1845, in which they are discussing Fielding’s Tom Jones. Clotilde rejected Comte’s love as a divorced woman and a devout Catholic, though they continued to correspond, until in the following year Clotilde died of tuberculosis, becoming a Saint of the Positivist religion. The ‘Testament’ is simply Comte’s legal will, in which can be found the details of the bequest of his books to various disciples, including the ‘small edition of the Divina Commedia, which serves me for daily use’.

Read more

MILL AND EDUCATION IN RUSSIA MILL, John Stuart, and Edward Livingston YOUMANS.

Новѣйшее образованiе: его истинныя цѣли и требованiя. Сборник статей въ защиту научнаго воспитанiя | Речь объ университетскомъ воспитанiи [The culture demanded by modern life: A series of addresses and arguments on the claims of scientific education and Inaugural address at St Andrews].

First edition in Russian of these two works, published in the original that same year.

Read more