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Letter: Letter: Survival of Darwin

Published 6 March 1993

From BOB MAAT

Chris Farrell (‘Survival of the fittest technologies’, 6 February) mistakenly
ascribes the expression ‘survival of the fittest’ to Charles Darwin, who
never used anything else but the concept ‘natural selection’.

Instead, it was his contemporary Herbert Spencer who must be credited
with the doubtful honour of coining the phrase for the process of evolution,
‘survival of the fittest’.

Bob Maat Roskilde University Library Denmark

Issue no. 1863 published 6 March 1993

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