Herbert Spencer, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
It is a discovery, and I held it as one before I had a formula for it. The formula is the summary of what the sciences disclose, and it was reached by induction across them before it was joined to a deduction. The transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous is exhibited in the aggregate of stars and nebulae, in the planetary system, in the Earth as an inorganic mass, in each organism by Von Baer's law, in the aggregate of organisms throughout geologic time, in the mind, in society, and in all products of social activity.1
Nobody invented that list; each item was found by those who studied it. Even the chemical record bears it out. Since the cooling of the Earth reached an advanced stage, its crust has grown ever more heterogeneous: the oxides and acids multiplied the kinds of substance, salts and the like multiplied them again, and the organic compounds yet again, each stage increasing the multiformity of the whole and of its members alike.2
The charge of a verbal formula has come chiefly from Professor Ward, who calls the phrase "indefinite, incoherent homogeneity" utterly unscientific. But the distinction the words express is the common-sense distinction between a thing uniform in its parts and a thing whose parts are unlike. A critic who must either deny that structural difference or reject the words that name it has not refuted the law; he has merely declined to use the language in which it is stated.3
I add that the formula is not bare change toward the multiform. It is a change from an indefinite homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity, because integration acts locally as well as generally and the increasing definiteness accompanies the increasing heterogeneity throughout.4 Nor is the formula left standing alone as a generalization of instances.
It rests on causes. In the absence of a homogeneity infinite and absolute, redistribution is inevitable, and the causes are these: the instability of the homogeneous, since the different parts of any limited aggregate are differently exposed to incident forces; the multiplication of effects, since every mass on which a force falls subdivides that force and works a variety of changes, each the parent of further changes; and segregation, which separates unlike units and gathers like ones, so sharpening differentiations otherwise caused.5
A mere verbal formula does not carry its own causes with it. As to the second question: no, the law does not stand or fall with the inheritance of acquired characters. The law of the redistribution of matter and motion in evolving aggregates holds of the solar system, the Earth's crust and the nebula, in all of which no organism, and so no inheritance, is concerned.
What I have held, and hold, is a narrower thing: that in organisms the higher faculties, and the co-adaptation of many co-operating parts, cannot be explained by selection alone. There the inheritance of functionally produced modifications is, in my judgment, indispensable, and the whole of my psychology and ethics rests upon it. But that is a doctrine within the biology and the psychology, not the foundation of the general law.
Should the factor be disproved, the question of how co-operative parts are kept in adjustment would remain unanswered, and the law of evolution in the inorganic and the superorganic domains would stand exactly where it stood.
Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity.67 The law holds of the solar system, the earth, the organism, the mind, language, the society and the arts, because it can be deduced from the persistence of force through the instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects, and it ends in equilibrium and dissolution.
In organisms it works by two factors, the survival of the fittest and the inheritance of functionally produced modifications; the second governs the higher faculties of mind and conduct, and without it the evolution of intelligence and of the moral sense is inexplicable.8910
in the aggregate of stars and nebulae; in the planetary system; in the earth as an inorganic mass; in each organism, vegetal or animal (Von Baer's law); in the aggregate of organisms throughout geologic time; in the mind; in society; in all products of social activity.Essays Scientific, Political, and Speculative Vol 2, Library ed
the components of its crust have been ever increasing in heterogeneity. When the so-called elements, originally existing in a dissociated state, united into oxides, acids, and other binary compounds, the total number of different substances was immensely augmentedEssays Scientific, Political, and Speculative Vol 1, Library ed
Must we accept Prof Ward's dictum respecting 'the utterly unscientific and unphilosophical phrase ' indefinite, incoherent homogeneity ' '?First Principles, 6th ed
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 heterogeneityEssays Scientific, Political, and Speculative Vol 2, Library ed
The instability of the homogeneous, which is consequent upon the different exposures of the different parts of any limited aggregate to incident forces.Essays Scientific, Political, and Speculative Vol 2, Library ed
Further qualifications contained in a succeeding chapter, bring the formula to this final form — " Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." Now if these various traits of the process of…First Principles, 6th ed
Throughout the universe in general and in detail, there is an unceasing redistribution of matter and motion. "2. This redistribution constitutes evolution where there is a predominant integration of matter and dissipation of motion, and constitutes dissolution where there is a predominant absorption of motion and disintegration of matter. "3.Essays Scientific, Political, and Speculative Vol 2, Library ed
Some twelve years ago an American friend requested me, with a view to a certain use which he named, to furnish him with a succinct statement of the cardinal principles developed in the successive works I have published.An Autobiography Vol 1
And I have exemplified the defects of judgment to which the analytical habit, unqualified by the synthetical habit, leads. Here we meet with a striking illustration. Scientific culture of the analytical kind, almost as much as absence of scientific culture, leaves the mind bare of those ideas with which the Concrete Sciences deal.First Principles, 6th ed
During the last days of the one year or the first days of the other, came the thought that, since the continuous metamorphosis due to these causes is displayed by all orders of existences, it ought to be the guiding conception running through and connecting all the concrete sciences, which severally treat of the different orders of existences; and there was forthwith sketched out a series of volumes in which a…An Autobiography Vol 2
The architecture of the Synthetic Philosophy and the part the twentieth century abandoned first: the formula was parodied, the deduction from force questioned, and Weismann's germ-plasm removed the factor on which the psychology and the ethics rested.