From the Greek paideia, meaning "education" or "child-rearing" (from paidos meaning "child"), FreedomPedia aims to educate others, children or adults, about freedom (eleutheria, in case you were wondering) and a variety of freedom-related topics. The main goal is to document how the Voluntary Society has worked in the past, works in the present and will continue to work and generally benefit all its participants in the future. A secondary objective is to contrast how the Coerced Society fails to benefit but a few of its members.
Today's Featured Article
- Herbert Spencer:
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher, was born at Derby on the 27th of April 1820. His father, William George Spencer, was a schoolmaster, and his parents' religious convictions familiarized him with the doctrines of the Methodists and Quakers. He declined an offer from his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, to send him to Cambridge, and so was practically self-taught. During 1837-1846 he was employed as an engineer on the London & Birmingham railway; 1848-1853 as sub-editor of the Economist. From about this time to 1860 he contributed a large number of articles to the Westminster Review, which contain the first sketches of his philosophic doctrines. He also published two larger works, Social Statics in 1850, and Principles of Psychology in 1855. In 1860 he sent out the syllabus of his Synthetic Philosophy in ten volumes, and in spite of frequent ill health had the satisfaction of completing it in 1896 with the third volume of the Principles of Sociology. He died on the 8th of December 1903.