Durkheim and Spencer

A limited effort is made in this article to compare and contrast Durkheim and Spencer, with particular emphasis on their theories of societal evolution and their basic approaches to social science methodology. It is concluded that, while Durkheim's sociology was heavily inSluenced by the work of Spencer, it differs in certain basic respects. To the extent that subsequent generations of sociologists have embraced the 'paradigm' of Durkheim and rejected that of Spencer, the effect upon macro-level sociological theory has been highly constricting. Much can be gained from a study of the strengths and weaknesses of both theorists, and from a more balanced perspective. ' Who now reads Spencer? ' intoned Talcott Parsons (quoting Crane Brinton) in the opening line of his own now seldom-read work, The Structure of Social Action. 1 'Spencer is dead. ' Whether or not this declamation was a self-fulfilling prophesy, it is certainly true that Herbert Spencer-who had once been lionized as perhaps the greatest mind of the nineteenth century-went into eclipse and became a virtual non-person among many twentieth century social scientists.2 Emile Durkheim, by contrast, came to be widely hailed as a 'founding father' of sociology, despite the fact that he owed much to Spencer. (Consider, for instance, the index to The Divzsion of Labor in Society,3 Durkheim's preeminent and most frequently cited work. It contains forty-three references to Spencer. The next most frequently mentioned author, Auguste Comte, is cited c)nly eighteen times. ) Indeed, there is a cutious tendency among historians of sociology to pass Spencer by and skip directly from Comte to Durkheim, despite the fact that Comte died in 1857, six years after Spencer's landmark Social Statics appeared, while Durkheim was born in 1858 and did not publish his first major work until 1893, near the end of Spencer's prodigious (albeit controversial) career. TheBrsttsh Journal of Sociology Volume 33 Number3 September 1982 i) RK.P. 1982 0007 1315/82/3303-0359 $1.50