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First Principles is Herbert Spencer's huge prospectus to the rest of his work, the synthetic philosophy. Spencer divides truth into the Unknowable and Knowable. Whether god(s) exists or not, whether the universe is eternal or was created is unknowable. We can't conceive of self-creation, eternity, or nothingness. This makes the positions of theism/deism, atheism and pantheism up to dispute. The ultimate nature of physical reality, or materialism versus idealism, is also unknowable, as we can't conceive of space and time or matter in themselves even though we depend on them. So Spencer's basically an agnostic. We should be open minded and not conflate our beliefs with the truth. What we can know, and this is philosophy, is systematic or general knowledge of phenomena. All we can know are the effects of the ultimate force(s) behind the universe.
Force is the starting point as whatever we know is what impinges on our perception. We give primacy to our ideas of space time matter and energy to this force, though these are meaningful as mental relations and not things in themselves. The truths of philosophy are to be found in the most general scientific truths. The rest of the work focuses on the processes of evolution and dissolution which govern matter. Evolution is a concentration of matter and decrease in motion, dissolution is a decomposition of matter and increase in motion (death). Spencer sees evolution in the formation of planets from stardust and the development from a single cell to the diversity of life, macrocosm and microcosm. Through both evolution and dissolution, Spencer derives the Law of Progress of the universe from a state of homogeneity to a state of heterogeneity, simplicity to complexity. The same cause has multiple effects as forces do not act equally on a body. This is a continuing process of equilibrium in which the universe becomes both integrated and diverse, just as society does with the division of labor and hierarchy from family to clan to tribe to nation. Quite an ambitious work.
The most contentious argument which is the culmination of First Principles is that evolution tends towards greater complexity. The use of progress isn't normative but as states of matter. This seems to be countered by the second law of thermodynamics entropy: in a closed system of transfer of energy but not matter, the amount of entropy or disorder stays the same or increases over time. This is the reverse of homogeneity to heterogeneity, but that applies to closed systems and not the universe as such necessarily, that is as the ultimate unknowable. Nevertheless even with the second law of thermodynamics order can increase locally. Since the 19th century it has been proposed that universal equilibrium is heat death, the death of the universe where no more physical processes will occur, but there is also the Big Crunch where the universe after expansion will fall in on itself in a black hole by force of gravity and will begin anew; a cyclical universe. Spencer's case is more metaphysical than physical though so it isn't clear that the law of progress can be falsified. It is widely held that the universe we know began in a state of high order, of homogeneity, and has grown more disordered so that we have an arrow of time with entropy so we have a meaningful past present and future, though the universe didn't have to begin this way. The recent discovery of dark matter/energy suggests that the universe is continuing to expand at a faster rate instead of slowing down. This could mean the universe is headed toward the Big Rip. So I take Spencer's law of progress to be a local phenomena and not the ultimate fate of the universe which is unknowable as Spencer defines it.
Henri Bergson who was influenced by Spencer in his own evolutionary philosophy nevertheless criticized Spencer for "cutting up present reality already evolved into little bits no less evolved and then recomposing it with these fragments, thus positing everything that is to be explained" (Creative Evolution 1907). Spencer by declaring the internal nature of the world to be unknowable proceeds to take the datum of worldly processes available to consciousness, the effects, to be the basis of evolution. But evolution, which means to unfold, is a process rather than mechanical step by step process. Multiplying the observed steps of this process in space and time doesn't give us its true nature. Spencer's reasoning is purely causal, by external relations where the relation of datum in space and time is what defines something's nature. This kind of thinking Bergson opposed to intuition which gives us a unity of duration in which every moment is linked together and we can't conceive of things in isolation as causal datum.
In Spencer's defense, what he is providing here is a philosophy for scientific investigation. What he calls unknowable are the most fundamental questions of philosophy, for which I do think we can hold reasonable positions on based on our own fundamental beliefs which while not verifiable are meaningful, perhaps the most meaningful. Despite the perhaps unsatisfying and superficial nature of Spencer's reasonings, they are a useful way to think about the world for those who want a unified naturalistic philosophy to unite the special sciences, which is what the rest of Spencer's synthetic philosophy is on biology, psychology, sociology and ethics. So I think Spencer isn't wrong as much as he limits his thinking yet extrapolates greatly on a few principles. I think this is a classic of philosophy and the first great work of evolutionary philosophy, which came out only a year after Darwin's The Origin of Species and doesn't even discuss natural selection.
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