Concept
Survival of the fittest
Overview
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, the phrase is best understood as "survival of the form that in successive generations will leave most copies of itself."
Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."
Darwin responded positively to Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest" as an alternative to "natural selection". He adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication published in 1868. In On the Origin of Species, he introduced the phrase in the fifth edition published in 1869, intending it to mean "better designed for an immediate, local environment".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Along with that remarkable process which, beginning in minute forms with what is called conjugation, developed into sexual generation, there came into play causes of frequent and marked fortuitous variations. The mixtures of constitutional proclivities made more or less unlike by unlikenesses of physical conditions, inevitably led to occasional concurrences of forces producing deviations of structure.
Herbert Spencer, The Factors of Organic Evolution
States what Survival of the fittest is; the author is tied to Survival of the fittest in the knowledge graph.
Eventually, among creatures of high organization, this factor became an important one; and I think there is reason to conclude that, in the case of the highest of creatures, civilized men, among whom the kinds of variation which affect survival are too multitudinous to permit easy selection of any one, and among whom survival of the fittest is greatly interfered with, it has become the chief factor: such aid as…
Herbert Spencer, Essays
States what Survival of the fittest is; the author is tied to Survival of the fittest in the knowledge graph.
The tuft of hair on the breast of the wild turkey-cock cannot be of any use, and it is doubtful whether it can be ornamental in the eyes of the female bird; indeed, had the tuft appeared under domestication it would have been called a monstrosity. _Illustrations of the Action of Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest._
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
The chapter “CHAPTER IV. NATURAL SELECTION; OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTE…” is titled for Survival of the fittest; names Survival of the fittest.
Philosophers who discussed Survival of the fittest
Related ideas
- Falsifiability
- Fitness (biology)
- Natural selection
- Explanatory power
- Herbert Spencer
- Stephen Jay Gould
- On the Origin of Species
- TalkOrigins Archive
- Social Darwinism
- Peter Kropotkin
- Charles Darwin
- Darwinism
- Evolution
- Predictive power
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.