Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 2 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
“6. The process of integration, acting locally as well as generally,
combines with the process of differentiation to render this change
not simply from homogeneity to heterogeneity, but from an indefinite
homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity; and this trait of increasing
definiteness, which accompanies the trait of increasing heterogeneity,
is, like it, exhibited in the totality of things and in all its
divisions and sub-divisions down to the minutest.
“7. Along with this redistribution of the matter composing any
evolving aggregate, there goes on a redistribution of the retained
motion of its components in relation to one another: this also
becomes, step by step, more definitely heterogeneous.
“8. In the absence of a homogeneity that is infinite and absolute,
that redistribution of which evolution is one phase, is inevitable.
The causes which necessitate it are these:―
“9. The instability of the homogeneous, which is consequent upon the
different exposures of the different parts of any limited aggregate to
incident forces. The transformations hence resulting are complicated
by―
“10. The multiplication of effects. Every mass and part of a mass
on which a force falls, sub-divides and differentiates that force,
which thereupon proceeds to work a variety of changes; and each
of these becomes the parent of similarly-multiplying changes: the
multiplication of them becoming greater in proportion as the aggregate
becomes more heterogeneous. And these two causes of increasing
differentiations are furthered by―
“11. Segregation, which is a process tending ever to separate unlike
units and to bring together like units—so serving continually to
sharpen, or make definite, differentiations otherwise caused.
“12. Equilibration is the final result of these transformations which
an evolving aggregate undergoes. The changes go on until there is
reached an equilibrium between the forces which all parts of the
aggregate are exposed to and the forces these parts oppose to them.
Equilibration may pass through a transition stage of balanced motions
(as in a planetary system) or of {142} balanced functions (as in a
living body) on the way to ultimate equilibrium; but the state of rest
in inorganic bodies, or death in organic bodies, is the necessary
limit of the changes constituting evolution.
“13. Dissolution is the counter-change which sooner or later every
evolved aggregate undergoes. Remaining exposed to surrounding
forces that are unequilibrated, each aggregate is ever liable to
be dissipated by the increase, gradual or sudden, of its contained
motion; and its dissipation, quickly undergone by bodies lately
animate and slowly undergone by inanimate masses, remains to be
undergone at an indefinitely remote period by each planetary and
stellar mass, which, since an indefinitely distant period in the past,
has been slowly evolving: the cycle of its transformations being thus
completed.
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