Summary of Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles”

Herbert Spencer’s First Principles is a fascinating book that I suspect most people have never heard of. I first encountered it reading Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. Bennett says “Herbert Spencer’s First Principles simply laughs at the claims of poetry and refuses to be accepted as aught but the most majestic product of any human mind.” How could I not want to read that?

Bennett was right — Spencer’s work is incredible. Originally published in 1862, Spencer attempted the ambitious task of unifying science and religion and uncovering the first principles governing the universe. Spencer drew from religion, physics, astronomy, geology, biology, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to create one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve ever read. He was also a talented writer — the prose is beautiful. He got a lot of things wrong, but it’s still an impressive intellectual work and worth exploring.

I strongly recommend reading Spencer’s original work — I can’t capture everything in a short summary — but for the purpose of crystallizing my own understanding and encouraging others to read his work, I’ll attempt a summary.

Science and Religion Share a Common Foundation
Spencer argues that even ideas that are wrong contain an element of truth if we examine their underlying principles. The more broadly known the idea, the more likely it contains some underlying truth. Nearly every culture in human history has religion. They vary wildly in their doctrines, but the…