This however had not occurred to me till reading your letter. Spencer’s excellent expression of ‘the survival of the fittest’. I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Darwin promptly replied that Wallace’s letter was “as clear as daylight. In July 1866 Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to Darwin about readers thinking that the phrase “natural selection” personified nature as “selecting”, and said this misconception could be avoided “by adopting Spencer’s term” Survival of the fittest. Darwin has called ‘natural selection’, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.” He first used the phrase – after reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species – in his Principles of Biology of 1864 in which he drew parallels between his economic theories and Darwin’s biological, evolutionary ones, writing, “This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Rodney Barker, Political Ideas in Modern Britain (London, 1978) History of the phraseīy his own account, Herbert Spencer described a concept similar to “survival of the fittest” in his 1852 “A Theory of Population”. Thus desirable human characteristics were naturally rewarded, and undesirable ones naturally discouraged. If government is kept to its minimum functions of the defence of persons and property, the enforcement of contracts, and the defence of the frontiers, individuals will flourish according to their ability or fitness to adapt to changing circumstances.Īlthough Spencer believed in the inheritance of superior and inferior skills, and in the passing on of skills acquired in one generation to the next, he did not share the fatalism of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Theory of social progress of English social scientist HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903), wrongly attributed to Charles Darwin (1809-82).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |