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7/21/2023 11:29:48 AM
3
“Survival of the fittest” is often misinterpreted as “the strongest and most athletic will survive”.
I’ve heard/read a couple of different explanations for the wording: fittest = best fit, or that it was used as a metaphor. Not sure which is correct, but the original meaning was about adaptations that are most suited to the environment.
Maybe it’s been used incorrectly so frequently that the phrase now has a legitimate double meaning.
English
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It originally came from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution So I’m pretty sure that it is “most fit” rather than “most athletic” I’m sure that both of them are also linked to each other The most athletic would be the most fit to survive in a colony of a certain species etc
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It was Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase after reading Darwin’s work. I heard on a podcast that in Victorian Britain ‘fittest’ was more commonly understood to mean ‘best fit’ — as in, the best fitting suit would be the one that is designed just right for a person (the fittest suit). The fittest plant or creature would be the one that had adaptations most suitable for its environment. Physicality/strength/health are definitely related but the phrase was intended to cover all adaptations that affected survival. The other explanation was that it was a metaphor, but the more I think about it, the less likely that seems as it very obviously confuses things.
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I stand corrected
