Spencer's Law: the Dynamics of Cognitive Complexity

Already well before Darwin, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) argued that organic evolution is characterized by Karl Ernst von Baer's (1792–1876) law of development “from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous” and thereby produces an ever-increasing elaborateness of detail and complexity of articulation. As Spencer saw it, organic species in the course of their development confront a successive series of environmental obstacles, and with each successful turning along the maze of developmental challenges the organism becomes selectively more highly specialized in its bio-design, and thereby more tightly attuned to the particular features of its ecological context.

Now this view of the developmental process may be of limited applicability in biological evolution, but there can be little question about its holding good in cognitive evolution. For rational beings will of course try simple things first and thereafter be led step by step toward an ever-enhanced complexification.