This chapter deals with the emergence of sociology as a discipline in Great Britain and France during the second half of the nineteenth century, and does so by considering the transfer of concepts, models, metaphors, and analogies from contemporaneous evolutionary biology. Sociology emerged in continued interaction with this biology. Moreover, this evolutionary biology had a marked Lamarckian/neo-Lamarckian perspective and emphasis both in France and in Great Britain. Insights into the relationships between individuals and collectivities, as conceptualized in the formulation of sociology in these countries, are obtained by analyzing the interactions and transfers between social thought and Lamarckian evolutionary theories.