How is survival of the fittest a misconception

Our eyeballs have evolved from a tiny, light-sensitive patch to the complex organs we have today. The Neolithic brought larger populations, technological advancements, but also had negative consequences. Many have come to use a phone booth to dial to their lost loved ones, after Japan's tsunami. You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. Have we misunderstood Darwin? Big ideas reflecting our evolution and what makes us intrinsically human. Sometimes, these adaptations cause new species to come into existence if the changes are large enough.

Even though this concept should be pretty straightforward and easily understood, there are several misconceptions about what natural selection is and what it means for evolution. Most likely, most of the misconceptions about natural selection come from this single phrase that has become synonymous with it. While technically, this is a correct statement, the common definition of "fittest" is what seems to create the most problems for understanding the true nature of natural selection.

Although Charles Darwin did use this phrase in a revised edition of his book On the Origin of Species , it was not intended to create confusion. In Darwin's writings, he intended for the word "fittest" to mean those who were most suited to their immediate environment. However, in the modern use of language, "fittest" often means strongest or in best physical condition.

This is not necessarily how it works in the natural world when describing natural selection. In fact, the "fittest" individual may actually be much weaker or smaller than others in the population.

If the environment favored smaller and weaker individuals, then they would be considered more fit than their stronger and larger counterparts. This is another case of common use of language that causes confusion in what is actually true when it comes to natural selection. A lot of people reason that since most individuals within a species fall into the "average" category, then natural selection must always favor the "average" trait.

Isn't that what "average" means? While that is a definition of "average," it is not necessarily applicable to natural selection. There are cases when natural selection does favor the average. This would be called stabilizing selection. However, there are other cases when the environment would favor one extreme over the other directional selection or both extremes and NOT the average disruptive selection.

In those environments, the extremes should be greater in number than the "average" or middle phenotype. Therefore, being an "average" individual is actually not desirable.

There are several things incorrect about the above statement. First of all, it should be pretty obvious that Charles Darwin did not "invent" natural selection and that it had been going on for billions of years before Charles Darwin was born.

Since life had begun on Earth, the environment was putting pressure on individuals to adapt or die out. Those adaptations added up and created all of the biological diversity we have on Earth today, and much more that has since died out through mass extinctions or other means of death.

Another issue with this misconception is that Charles Darwin was not the only one to come up with the idea of natural selection. Member Services FAQs. Legacy Society. Science Champions Society. Give a Gift of Stock. Donor-Advised Funds. Employer Matching Gifts. Facebook Fundraisers. Free Memberships for Graduate Students. Teaching Resources. Misconception of the Month.

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