 Many recent interpreters of Spencer, especially sociologists, have insisted that his sociological theory and his ethics do not intertwine, that his sociology stands apart and that therefore we can discount his moral theory in our efforts to understand his legacy to social science. For instance, J. D. Y. Peel has argued that Spencer’s sociology is “logically independent of his ethics.” Jonathan H. Turner concurs, claiming that Spencer’s ethics and other ideological shortcomings “get in the way of viewing Spencer as a theorist whose [sociological] ideas have endured (if only by rediscovery).” For Turner, his “sociology is written so that these deficiencies can easily be ignored.” Robert Carneiro and Robert Perrin cite and reiterate Peel’s assessment.[6]   And more recently, Mark Francis implies much the same, writing that Spencer’s theory of social change “operated on a different level than his moral theory.”.[7]  But just because many years later we can get something out of his sociology while ignoring his ethics and, for that matter, anything else besides sociology that he wrote, we would err in thinking that we have correctly interpreted Spencer let alone thinking that we have correctly interpreted even just his sociology. It is one thing to discover how a past thinker seems to presage our present thinking on this matter or that, and it is another thing entirely to try to interpret a past thinker as best we can.