[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:05:55 -0800
"Survival of the fittest" is I believe a concept Darwin imported from Herbert, who was an
economist. (Previously he only used "natural selection.") It's unfortunate in that it mixes
prescriptive with descriptive terms (survival with "fitness")
The concept would seem to have been imported by Spencer from Darwin; the
actual phrase was first used, as reported below, by Herbert Spencer,
he seems to have got the idea from Darwin. Darwin didn't use the
expression in print until the 5th printing of Origin [1869], where it's
the title of Book IV. (Origin was first published in 1859.)
'While the British economist Herbert Spencer is often credited with
introducing the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his 1851 work Social
Statics (relating to free market economics) or his First Principles of a
New system of Philosophy of 1862, he actually did not use the phrase
until after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. and
introduced it in his Principles of Biology of 1864, vol. 1, p. 444,
writing "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."'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest
'This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations,
and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural
Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.' [Darwin, Origin]
http://www.bartleby.com/11/4001.html
(The foregoing is McScholarship. We provide summer and holiday
employment for high school and college students, who would otherwise
lose themselves in philosophy.)
Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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