  Wright strongly criticized Herbert Spencer's philosophy of evolution, both because of its excessive claims for the range of evolution and because of Spencer's understanding of evolution as a force or operative cause. There is no Law of Evolution applicable to nature and civilization. Spencer's examples drawn from the history of civilization are not truly scientific and are “liable to the taint of teleological and cosmological conception.” (PD 73). Wright said, “To us Mr. Spencer's speculation seems but the abstract statement of the cosmological conceptions, and that kind of orderliness which the human mind spontaneously supplies in the absence of facts sufficiently numerous and precise to justify sound scientific conclusions” (PD 73). In a review of a collection of essays by Alfred Wallace, the co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection, Wright said: