“To put it in the terms chosen lately by Mr. Arthur Harris in a friendly criticism of my views: "Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest."”

Concluding sentence of his work Species and Varieties: Their Origin by Mutation (1904), The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago, p. 826.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To put it in the terms chosen lately by Mr. Arthur Harris in a friendly criticism of my views: "Natural selection may e…" by Hugo De Vries?
Hugo De Vries photo
Hugo De Vries 2
Dutch botanist 1848–1935

Related quotes

Bob Marley photo

“They say: only the fittest of the fittest shall survive, stay alive!”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Could You Be Loved
Uprising (1979)

Charles Darwin photo

“The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

Compare: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr Darwin has called 'natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.' ", Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology (1864) volume 1, part III: "The Evolution of Life", chapter XII, "Indirect Equilibration", pages 444-445.
Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter III: "Struggle For Existence", page 72 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=101&itemID=F387&viewtype=image, in the fifth (1869) and sixth (1872) editions

Charles Fort photo
Henry Adams photo
Herbert Spencer photo

“It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces.
But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Principles of Biology, Vol. I (1864), Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 7: Indirect Equilibration
Principles of Biology (1864)
Context: It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces.
But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force.

Alfred Korzybski photo

“How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile — in space-binding competition!”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Source: Manhood of Humanity (1921), p. 136. Chapter: Capitalistic Era.
Context: Such as contribute most to human progress and human enlightenment — men like Gutenberg, Copernicus, Newton, Leibnitz, Watts, Franklin, Mendeleieff, Pasteur, Sklodowska-Curie, Edison, Steinmetz, Loeb, Dewey, Keyser, Whitehead, Russell, Poincaré, William Benjamin Smith, Gibbs, Einstein, and many others — consume no more bread than the simplest of their fellow mortals. Indeed such men are often in want. How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile — in space-binding competition!

Wally Lamb photo

“Science progresses by trial and error, by conjectures and refutations. Only the fittest theories survive.”

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 5, Introducing falsification, p. 60.

Buckminster Fuller photo

“That’s the basis of all politics: it has to be you or me, there’s not enough for both of us. Survival of the fittest.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Richard Dawkins photo

Related topics