Did you know Charles Darwin didn’t actually coin the phrase "survival of the fittest"? In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life and legacy of the man who did: Herbert Spencer. Once considered the single most famous European intellectual of the late 19th century, Spencer was a polymath whose works sold over a million copies during his lifetime, yet his influence declined so sharply that by 1937 sociologists asked, "Who now reads Spencer?",.

Join us as we break down Spencer’s massive "System of Synthetic Philosophy," an ambitious attempt to unify biology, psychology, and morality under a single law of evolution,. We discuss why he clung to Lamarckism over natural selection to explain social progress and his belief that evolution would eventually result in "the perfect man in the perfect society",.

Key topics in this episode includ ...