Hi
Quote:
“This preservation of favorable individual differences and variations and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest”.(Origin of the Species)
The latter phrase he (Darwin) had taken from Lyell and served only to confuse matters"
European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche
One of the most distinguished cultural and intellectual historians of our time, Frank Turner taught a landmark Yale University lecture course on European intellectual history that drew scores of students over many years. His lectures—lucid,...
According to Wikipedia:
Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin’s biological ones: “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.”[1]
Darwin responded positively to Alfred Russel Wallace’s suggestion of using Spencer’s new phrase “survival of the fittest” as an alternative to “natural selection”, and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication published in 1868.[1][2]
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, the phrase is best understood as "[s]urvival of the form that in successive generations will leave most copies of itself."
Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in...
So reread the two references cited in that post.
Thank for that Past Tense. So it appears then that Charles Lyell was not Darwin’s source as the quote I posted suggests.
Turner’s sentence seems to be misleading. Lyell and Darwin had been arguing over the term “natural selection.”
Darwin discussed the details of transmutation theory during the year with Alfred Russel Wallace. They corresponded in February on non-blending characteristics with reference to Darwin’s crosses between different varieties of sweetpea and Wallace’s work on different female forms of a Malayan species of butterfly. In July, Wallace sent a lengthy commentary on the term ‘natural selection’. Darwin’s metaphorical use of the expression had been a subject of long discussion in previous years with Lyell, Gray, and Hooker.
Wallace’s remarks were prompted by several recent reviews in which Origin had been criticised for inconsistencies with respect to the role of design in nature. A similar criticism had been made by the editor of the Quarterly Journal of Science, James Samuelson, in his letter of 8 April 1866. Wallace argued that the extended analogy that Darwin had drawn between natural selection and artificial or human selection had encouraged readers to attribute intelligent choice to nature. Wallace also pointed out passages in which Darwin had written of nature as ‘favouring’ or ‘seeking’ the good of a species, and warned against personifying nature too much. In place of ‘natural selection’, Wallace suggested that Darwin substitute ‘survival of the fittest’, an expression first used by Herbert Spencer in an 1864 instalment of Principles of biology. (Letter from A. R. Wallace, 2 July 1866.) Darwin agreed that Spencer’s term had merit, but argued that it could not be directly substituted as, unlike the term ‘natural selection’, it could not be used as a substantive governing a verb.
Again, Wallace persuaded Darwin to use Spencer’s term, not Lyell.
Exapno_Mapcase:
Turner’s sentence seems to be misleading. Lyell and Darwin had been arguing over the term “natural selection.”
Again, Wallace persuaded Darwin to use Spencer’s term, not Lyell.
Yes, Turner’s sentence is misleading. Thank you Exapno Mapcase for clearing up the confusion.