[lit-ideas] Re: Do the fittest survive? Not necessarily
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:05:22 -0400
On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:38 PM, Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'v always wondered if there weren't a definitional tautology involved in
> "survival of the fittest" -- what do we call those who survive? fitter than
> others... Or define fittest? Those who survive...
>
>
The particular example I posted is a nice illustration of how fitness takes
on different senses depending on the relevant context. I might seem common
sense that a bigger beetle that gets more of the food is fitter than the
smaller beetle who winds up with less. All other things being equal, the
bigger beetles will flourish while the smaller beetles won't. If, however,
for some reason external to the competition between the bigger and smaller
beetles, the food supply shrinks, the bigger beetles who require more food
and use it less efficiently may be more severely affected than the surviving
smaller beetles who require less and use it more efficiently. A population
composed of only smaller beetles may be more fit in a famine, when the
bigger beetles die off.
If we stop to think of it, this story is a familiar one. Think of small
ancestral mammals skulking in the shadows of dinosaurs until something wipes
out the dinosaurs. Or dystopian science fiction in which small bands of
hardy survivors emerge when a plague or nuclear war has wiped out
civilization.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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