🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <94684@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992Oct23.160505.2580@oracorp.com>, daryl@oracorp (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>>                                      And I think his criticism is
>>valid; it isn't clear what slogans such as "survival of the fittest"
>>can be other than tautologies.
>
>If you're silly enough to define fitness as survival, sure.

I think fitness really pretty much is defined as survival, as Daryl has
argued in other postings.  (At least, survival of your genes.)

I think the real content of "survival of the fittest" is that "fittest" is a
naturalistic concept.  While it is *defined* in terms of survival, it
depends only on natural law.  No supernatural agencies are required.  Among
a group of modern scientists and engineers, that is a relatively
uncontroversial position, so the slogan sounds a bit quaint in this context.

The main content of evolutionary theory is that *random* mutation is the
only input to this process.  So another sense of "survival of the fittest"
is a negative one: survival of the fittest is the only thing driving
evolution.  This would not be true, for example, of Lamarckian evolution.