What does Survival of the Fittest have to do with evolution?

Question

Doesnt taht just say whichever being is more prepared will survive? Thats like saying somebody in cold weather with a jacket would have a better chance of staying warm, than a naked person. Does that really prove evolution, or disprove reiligion.

Answer 1

spelling is good for you.
BTW
If you're too lazy use spell check, otherwise no one is going to take you for real.

Answer 2

"Survival of the fittest" is a poor way to think about evolution. Darwin himself did not use the phrase in the first edition of Origin of Species. What Darwin said is that heritable variations lead to differential reproductive success. This is not circular or tautologous. It is a prediction that can be, and has been, experimentally verified (Weiner 1994).


The phrase cannot be a tautology if it is not trivially true. Yet there have been theories proposing that the fittest individuals perish:
Alpheus Hyatt proposed that lineages, like individuals, inevitably go through stages of youth, maturity, old age, and death. Towards the end of this cycle, the fittest individuals are more likely to perish than others (Hyatt 1866; Lefalophodon n.d.).
The theory of orthogenesis says that certain trends, once started, kept progressing even though they become detrimental and lead to extinction. For example, it was held that Irish elks, which had enormous antlers, died out because the size increase became too much to support.
The "fittest" individuals could be considered those that are ideally suited to a particular environment. Such ideal adaptation, however, comes at the cost of being more poorly adapted to other environments. If the environment changes, the fittest individuals from it will no longer be well adapted to any environment, and the less fit but more widely adapted organisms will survive.


The fittest, to Darwin, were not those which survived, but those which could be expected to survive on the basis of their traits

Answer 3

Posting a science question in the religion and spirituality section often means the asker does not really want an answer. His goal is to ask a question that he believes proves some scientific knowledge to be wrong, or that science does not yet answer, and make the implicit claim that the only other explanation is a god, and specifically, the same god he happens to believe in.

It's the "god of the gaps" - intellectually bankrupt, since it favors ignorance instead of knowledge, and because of the contained logical fallacy.

However, on the off chance that you really want to know the answer:

It's just a very unofficial way to describe natural selection.

Mutation + natural selection = evolution.

Try this on for size: somebody in cold weather with more feathers would have a better chance of staying warm than somebody with less feathers. Therefore mutations which increase the number of feathers increase the chance of survival, and those which decrease the number of feathers decrease the chance of survival.

Over a few hundred generations, birds will change because the way beneficial mutations are selected.

And no, science has nothing to do with religion.

Answer 4

"Survival of the Fittest" is not a phrase that Darwin ever used. That phrase was coined by a sociologist named Herbert Spencer who endorsed something called "Social Darwinism" in the latter half of the 19th century.

In biological evolutionary terms, it is simplistic and misleading to talk of "fittest", because it implies that "fittest" is an absolute objective trait of a being that we can measure and use to predict survival. Fitness is completely dependent on the environment. For example, take dogs and wolves. By any objective, contextfree analysis, wolves are more fit than dogs: they are, on average, larger, faster, tougher, and smarter. Yet dogs greatly outnumber wolves, due in no small part to forming a semi-symbiotic relationship with the most dangerous species on the planet: humans.

Note also that evolution and religion are not contradictory concepts. Many, many people are religious but also believe in evolution.

Answer 5

Survival of the Fittest has nothing to do with being prepared. It has to do with species of animals, and, since animals don't "prepare" for anything, has nothing to do with it. Survival of the fittest has to do with the different versions of species that that come and gone during the millions of years that Earth has been around. The species that were capable of surviving, did just that, and hence, evolved with the changes of the planet. The species that remained the same during these changes, died out because they could not survive in the changing environment of Earth. Just like humans have evolved, the species that are the humans of today, slowly evolved from other types that could not keep up with Earth, and therefore, died out.

Answer 6

Actually survival is more of a proof against evolution. For example, the moths in England come in two varieties: white and black. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the white variety was dominant. As the Industrial Revolution's use of coal fires increased, the soot on the trees made the white moths more visible to predators. This caused the black variety to become dominant. As coal was replaced by oil, the soot disappeared from the trees. And the white variety became dominant again.

So there you have it, survival of the fittest. Moths did not evolve from white to black, and then back to white. It is impossible for an organism to evolve. There is variation within species. Those are the limits. One species cannot become another. Evolution is a myth.

Answer 7

In a sense you are correct about the whole jacket thing.


One person was intelligent enough to plan ahead and bring appropriate clothes. The other obviously far less intelligent person, didn't, and as a result will die.

Intelligence in this case is far more beneficial because it provides the ability to for see future events.

Her ego an intelligent being is "more fit" to survive that a less intelligent being.

Edit: In general you shoudl consider the term "fittest" to merely mean, any ability or physical disposition that gives one individual a slight advantage over another when in regards to the ability to procreate.

Answer 8

If I remember correctly, the phrase "suvival of the fittest" was not even used originally by Darwin. Nonetheless, it is not representative of the depth of the theory of evolution. It refers instead to the best adapted genetically to meet the environmental challenges will be more likely to reproduce. It has little to do with current survival of any individual, but the successful procreation. Many individuals may survive in the face of an environmental shift, but unless they can bear children, raise them, and see them off to bear more children, then their individual suvival doesn't aid in their genetic material passing along to the coming generations, i.e., evolution.

Answer 9

"Survival of the fittest" is a commentary on evolution. Natural selection of favorable heritable variations indicates that given equal quality coats, the person who does better in the cold is more likely to have children who will benefit from that advantage, as well.

Answer 10

the species who has evolved to be better than it's predecessor will thrive. like say monkey B was a mutant monkey A. monkey B has a short tail and monkey A has a long tail. so let's say the monkeys are running through the rainforest and a jaguar starts running after them. the jaguar cathces the tail of monkey A.

so yeha, it's like the jacket senario, but this doesn't really prove evolution. we coulda and shoulda wiped out all inferior ape species by now...

Answer 11

Natural Selection (surivival of the fittest) is one of the two basic ideas behind evolution. That just means that the creatures in a certain species who are more adapted to their environment are less likely to die, and more likely to have more offspring.

Combine Natural Selection with genetic mutations and, voila, you get evolution!