{"id":9720,"date":"2022-01-28T08:28:55","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T07:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=10545"},"modified":"2022-01-28T11:51:11","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T10:51:11","slug":"did-charles-darwin-coin-the-phrase-survival-of-the-fittest","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/did-charles-darwin-coin-the-phrase-survival-of-the-fittest\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Charles Darwin coin the phrase \u2018survival of the fittest\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Justin Pollard\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Friday, 28 January 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Although the phrase \u2018survival of the fittest\u2019 came about as a direct result of the publication of Charles Darwin<\/a>\u2019s seminal On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection<\/em>, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life<\/em>, it was not a phrase he at first used to describe what he called \u2018natural selection\u2019.<\/p>\n

In fact the phrase first appears in the 1864 book Principals of Biology<\/em> by the greatly overlooked polymath Herbert Spencer. Spencer believed that evolution was at work throughout the cosmos and applied to the creation of stars as much as to life on Earth as everything was evolving from simpler forms into more complex ones.<\/p>\n

Having read Darwin\u2019s masterpiece he incorporated these ideas into his own works, calling Darwin\u2019s approach \u2018survival of the fittest\u2019. Not that Spencer agreed completely with Darwin, applying his ideas far beyond biology into sociology and politics. He thought that all societies evolve from more primitive, simpler forms to sophisticated ones, eventually reaching an evolutionary \u2018end-point\u2019 \u2013 a final state of perfect equilibrium \u2013 at which stage natural selection then stops.<\/p>\n

It was not until the fifth edition of Origin of Species<\/em>, published on 10\u00a0February\u00a01869, that Darwin returned the compliment, using the phrase \u2018survival of the fittest\u2019. He chose this, and credited Spencer with its invention, as he felt that \u2018natural selection\u2019 implied a conscious choice whereas evolution in fact had no conscious decision-making process. What he did not mean was what the phrase has come to mean today, that is \u2018in the best physical condition\u2019. Rather ironically, because of this, modern evolutionary biologists nearly always use Darwin\u2019s original term \u2018natural selection\u2019 instead.<\/p>\n