Survival of the fittest
phrase to describe the mechanism of natural selection / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Survival of the fittest is a famous phrase of Herbert Spencer which describes the idea that, in nature, there is competition to survive and reproduce. It is a metaphor, as are the phrases struggle for existence, and natural selection, both of which were used by Charles Darwin.[1] Scientists often use such metaphors as shorthand for key ideas.[2] These metaphors stick in the mind, but they need to be properly understood, or they may be used wrongly.