It’s not survival of the fittest but survival of the nurtured

What Darwin really cared about…

Charles Darwin mentioned the word love more than 95 times, referred to moral sympathy 92 times, and only wrote “survival of the fittest” twice. [5]

“survival of the fittest” […] is a phrase not coined by Darwin, but by the economist Herbert Spencer, infused with his interests in economic domination and has falsely shaped our modern scientific evolutionary understanding of life [1, 2]. Spencer conflated “fitness” with strength; whereas Darwin intended “fitness” to mean matched or fit to the conditions, in which the animal finds itself. Richard Hofstadter argues in his work “Social Darwinism in American Thought” that Spencer’s interpretation inspired Andrew Carnegie and William Graham Sumner’s visions of unbridled and unrepentant capitalism [3]. Darwin was well aware of the evolutionary weakness of the survival-of-the-fittest idea:

“Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring.” [4]

I first researched this topic during my Bachelor’s thesis on a 🔮 Renewed Holistic Science & Engineering Practice in 2021 (p. 18).

If you think there is more to say, feel free to leave your thoughts below! This insight has left a deep impression on me as it shows how Darwin’s work was taken out of context and co-opted by capitalist forces. I’d love to continue a conversation about it…

References

[1] - Weinstein, Herbert Spencer, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spencer/

[2] - Spencer, The Principles of Biology,

[3] - Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought;

[4] - NBC, Survival of the Fittest Has Evolved: Try Survival of the Kindest, https://www.nbcnews.com/better/relationships/survival-fittest-has-evolved-try-survival-kindest-n730196

[5] - The-Darwin-Project, Darwin’s Unfolding Revolution, https://www.thedarwinproject.com/revolution/stake.html

Another related paper that weaves in complex systems thinking:

[6] - Loye, D. (2022). Darwin and the Human Future. In Chaos and Nonlinear Psychology: Keys to Creativity. Retrieved from Core.ac.uk.

License for all original work:

DARWIN-NOT-SURVIVAL-OF-THE-FITTEST