Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher. Spencer began his career in 1848 as a journalist for The Economist magazine. In 1855 he published his best known work Principals of Psychology in which he applied Darwin's ideas on evolution to man, which Darwin had originally avoided. He also coined the phrase survival of the fittest" and applied it to sociology and economics. Unfortunately, "the fittest" was widely taken to mean prosperous white Victorian men."