Darwin’s Untimely Burial

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has a problem with the idea of "survival of the fittest." This term normally means no more than "differential reproductive success"-the production of more surviving offspring than other competing members of the population-which is a needless repetition of the same meaning. "The crucial phrase of natural selection means no more than "the survival of those who survive"-a vacuous tautology" such as "my father is a man," argues Bethell.
In the second place, Bethell agrees that Darwin proposed an independent criterion to define fitness other than survival. However, this also presented a problem, because it was an analogy...a dangerous and slippery strategy. "Later evolutionists," argues Bethell, "recognize the failure of Darwin's analogy and redefined 'fitness' as mere survival. But they did not realize that they had undermined the logical structure of Darwin's central postulate. Nature provides no independent criterion of fitness; thus, natural selection is ...

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