Social Statics

Social Statics, or The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed is an 1851 book by the British polymath Herbert Spencer, published in London by John Chapman. In it Spencer applies his ideas of Lamarckian evolution to society, using the term "fitness" to describe how beings adapt to the conditions of their existence. He argues that human beings can become adapted to the social state only by remaining in it, and that since their feelings are still insufficient to keep individuals united, some artificial agency is needed to maintain that union until adaptation itself produces a character able to sustain social equilibrium spontaneously.

Although the phrase "survival of the fittest" is often attributed to the book, Spencer coined it in his Principles of Biology of 1864. The idea is often cited as a key tenet of so-called Social Darwinism, though Spencer was not an advocate of that label. The work has been highly regarded in the libertarian tradition: economist Murray Rothbard called it the greatest single work of libertarian political philosophy ever written. By contrast, the writer Antoinette Brown Blackwell criticized it for giving too little attention to women's place in nature.