Tags
biology, Darwinism, Education, evolution, fitness, natural selection, Popular science, replicator, science, selfish gene, tautology
For the third part in my series about natural selection I’d like to address the concept of fitness. Thanks to the phrase “survival of the fittest”, fitness is quite a prominent idea in the popular perception of evolution. It was originally coined by Herbert Spencer after he read On the Origin of Species; Darwin adopted the phrase in later editions and it’s been popular ever since. Unfortunately, this glib phrase has often eclipsed a more accurate depiction of evolution, leading to some common misunderstandings. This confusion arises because “fitness” has a different meaning in evolutionary biology than it does in general usage. (Have a look at the earlier posts in this series if you haven’t already read them; the first was about the different modes of natural selection and the second discussed selection mechanisms, focusing on sexual selection in particular.)