Survival of the fittest. What does it mean?

The adjective fit is a tricky one. The COED has two definitions that interest us here: the first is ‘of a suitable quality, standard, or type’, and the second is ‘in good health, especially because of regular physical exercise’. The latter derives from the former, but the actual origin of the word is uncertain. The word apt could be used to cover the first of these definitions and it is what was meant when the phrase survival of the fittest was coined by the economist Herbert Spencer, who saw the analogy of what he was describing in economics with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. The COED defines the survival of the fittest as ‘the continued existence of the organisms best adapted to their environment; natural selection’ and Darwin adopted the phrase in a later edition of his Origin of Species.

Unfortunately, in popular use the second meaning has tended to take over with the result that it has become understood as a justification of unrestrained competition between peers, with no consideration of the hereditable element involved in Darwinian natural selection. If Spencer had spoken of the survival of the best adapted a considerable amount of misunderstanding and social discord could have been avoided. But it is not only that this is a less snappy phrase; when Spencer was writing in 1864, fit meant unambiguously what he intended. The colloquial meaning of ‘in good health, perfectly well’ is first recorded by the OED from 1869 with reference to racehorses and seems to have been applied to people only in the 1880s.

The Romance languages that I have investigated have forms that correspond to aptness with some hints that this is the form that should be used in biology, though in each case there is a form that translates as the law of the strongest (all except Catalan from WordReference)

Spanish: La supervivencia del más apto / La ley del más fuerte
Catalan: La supervivència del més apte / La llei del més fort
French: La survie du plus apte / La loi du plus fort
Italian: La sopravvivenza del più adatto / La legge del più forte

For German the LEO on-line dictionary gives: Überleben der Geeignetsten / Überleben der Tauglichsten / Überleben des [sic] Tüchtigsten (marking the last as the biological definition). However, all three words correspond to apt rather than to strong.

Comments

[Baralbion]

"Survival of the fitter" possibly conveys the sense better. But that risks confusion with the man who comes to install the washing machine.