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Herbert Spencer (27/04/1820-08/12/1903) developed a theory of social evolution. His theory includes a definition of progress, and embraces the whole natural world beginning with the origination of planets all the way through chemical compounds, biological organisms to what he calls social organisms. Later on such theories were labeled as umbrella theories and dismissed.
A more severe blow received his theoretical work when he was stigmatized as the father of Social Darwinism. The anti-social-darwinism movement made him the scapegoat in its pursuit of their interests. Unfortunately that brought about not only that his work is widely ignored today but also kind of Denkhemmung among all evolutionary biologists who flinch from accepting progress as the ultimate goal of evolution and from generalizing evolutionary principles to non-living objects and societies.
His work Progress: Its Law And Cause was published 1857. It substantiates that the primary goal of evolution is growing heterogeneity. A somewhat later work The Social Organism compares social structures and biological organisms in a more abstract way than ever done before. This theoretical considerations may well considered as primordial fauceir theory. Most of his work is freely downloadable from The Online Library of Liberty.
