ed racism than American society of the 1950s. In general American society has become more complex.
What then are the mechanisms that produce societal changes such as those found in America? Spencer was very much concerned with the mechanisms and processes that effected societal changes such as those that have taken place in America. Borrowing again from the physical sciences, Spencer offered the concept of evolution as the key mechanisms of social change toward more societal complexity. The concept of "dissolution" was offered to explain societal changes in the reverse direction.
Spencer's reliance on the models of physical science, particularly upon the processes of both entropy and negentropy, are very much evident in Spencer's explication of the processes of societal change. As he put it:
. . . there is always a differential progress toward either integration or disintegration. During the earlier part of the cycle of changes, the integration predominates--there goes on what we call growth. The middle part of the cycle is usually characterized, not by equilibrium between the integrating and disintegrating processes, but by alternative excesses of them. And the cycle closes with a period in which the disintegration, beginning to predominate, eventually puts a stop to integration and undoes what integration had originally done (Spencer, 1862, p.246).
Clearly what Spencer is saying is that society is in a constant state of tension as its elements aggregate into collectives, then splinter or dissolve restructuring themselves into new units and finally, in the downfall of the society, splintering and dissolving without reaggregation. However, the question may be asked: What determines those societies that will eventually evolve to more complex forms and those that will dissolve?
It is the answer which Spencer offered for this question that justifies the identification of "the structural functionalist" as a developer...