Survival of the fittest
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"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as repr
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest".
Herbert Spencer
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Herbert Spencer was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined
Survival of the fittest
…success. In Darwinian terms, the phrase is best understood as "survival of the form that in successive generations will leave most copies of itself." Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between…
Spencer at the age of 73
Spencer as a young man
Spencer's tomb, in Highgate Cemetery, north London
Portrait of Spencer by John Bagnold Burgess, 1871–72