Interlude: ‘Collectivity’ in the Nineteenth Century Between the Biological and the Social

Generally, the ‘individual’ in the biological disciplines in Britain and France was perceived as an entity in terms of which all else had to be described, analyzed, and explained. This was further enhanced in the transfer from these disciplines to emerging sociology and psychology. Yet I show how from Spencer on, the Spencerian Lamarckism/neo-Lamarckism perspective on adaptation, evolution, and heredity, provided modes of linking individuals and sociality, of collectivizing.