the.com/survival of the fittest
Not the strongest survive, just whoever annoys extinction the longest.
means The principle that the organisms best suited to their particular environment are the ones that tend to survive and reproduce, passing their traits on.
from Coined not by Darwin but by philosopher Herbert Spencer in 1864, after reading Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'; Darwin himself only adopted the phrase as a synonym for 'natural selection' in later editions, at Spencer's urging, and reportedly came to regret it — since 'fittest' quickly got misread as 'strongest' or 'best,' when it really just means 'best fitted to the current circumstances,' which could be the smallest, blandest, or luckiest creature in the room.
- coined by
- Herbert Spencer, not Darwin himself
- common myth
- fittest means strongest, actually means best-adapted
- real example
- cockroaches outlasted dinosaurs by being unremarkable
- darwin's term
- he preferred natural selection, borrowed Spencer's phrase later