Are the terms "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" tautologies?

Question

Are these terms tautalogical formulations? If so, how?

Love jack

So are we saying that the "fittest" are those which have the most offspring? Then those offsprng which have many opffspring are said to be the "fittest," correct?

So the fittest are those who have the most offspring, and those which have the most offspring are the fittest...

I don't think that removes the problem of tautology.

Answer 1

I agree with John there is an extreme reach to get the same meaning from survival and fittest. I think difficulties occur in todays culture because we rarely use the term fittest for what is appropriate.
Survival in the sense of constancy, and perpetuation is what Spenser meant not individual vitality.
While fittest meant most apt not personal strength.
"Most apt to promote perpetuation of an organism through variation in heritable traits" is a modern paraphrase.
The phrase 'survival of the fittest' is better than 'natural selection' because it avoids the confusion with selection having any meaning of purposeful adoption.
There is no repeat of meaning in either phrase as used in original context.

In terms of logical tautology is the concept true solely because of the terms used? No this is not a concept derived from pure analysis. It is a condensation of repeated empirical evidence but the terms can not be considered having formal variables. Fittest is most apt for the entire variable set of the organism's environment. An environment includes organic factors like organisms and their interactions plus non-organic factors, like climate or geography, as they affect heritable traits. This is far beyond accurate variable assignment so this phrase has no explicit predictive quantification.
If this phrase just meant 'those that reproduce survive' then it would be a tautology. But natural selection is the part VARIATION plays in reproductive success.
The phrases are just the shortest means of communicating a complex concept without mentioning the mechanism of heritability.

Answer 2

"survival of the fittest" may be considered a tautology, in the sense that the simple definition of "the fittest" would be "that which survives". Of course that whole thing is misleading, because it's not about "survival of the fittest" at all, but about who has the most kids. I don't see how "natural selection" could possibly be considered tautological though. Perhaps I'm just being unusually stupid because it's Friday, though.

Answer 3

They are nonsensical expansions of the lie of evolution. If "survival of the fittest" is true, why do we let babies live? After all, according to evolution, babies are just a burden on the food supply and we should kill them. Obviously, I am merely making a point and I am not advocating killing babies. Evolution is a lie from Hell.