Word: fittest
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...Dawkins, under the watchful eye of such biologists as John Maynard Smith and Robert Trivers, is careful to qualify his statements to keep them honest. Is it not Emmerich who is distorting the truth when he asks, "and didn't distortions of Darwin's theory of 'survival of the fittest' and belief in inherent genetic inferiority lead once to the death of six million Jews?" (Dawkins never mentions race.) Does Emmerich suggest Darwin should not have published his theory, because it could be so abused? If distortions of the little hard knowledge and, more plausible though unsubstantiated theory that sociobiology...
...which ultimately leads to the truth and a more accurate conception of the universe. Maybe so. But academics also have a responsibility to avoid abusing the faith people put in them. They should not intentionally distort knowledge. And didn't distortions of Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest" and belief in inherent genetic inferiority lead once to the death of six million Jews...
...author animates dreary economics lessons with did-you-know facts. For example it was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." The assembly line was not invented by Henry Ford but by an anonymous Frenchman who increased pin production tenfold by instituting the division of labor at his factory. Paper money is of pure Yankee lineage. When Massachusetts soldiers returned from action in the French and Indian War in 1690 they were paid not in coin but in promissory notes that could be traded for goods. The perverse alchemy by which governments turned gold...
...state interference on behalf of society's welfare. Because Spencer's society was evolving naturally, any such tampering would result in disaster. These theories, embraced by upper and middle classes alike in America, provided these classes with a rationale for opposing all social reform. The phrase "survival of the fittest," taken from Spencer's work, suggested that those on the top and bottom deserved to be there and that such a division was both natural and good for society...
Powers suggests no way to escape the faceless men of the highway department. At the end of "Look How the Fish Live," when the young father has decided that survival of the fittest is indeed the rule of life, unethical as he finds it--all he can do is "accept his God-given limitations" and give up. Powers's bleak vision offers no hope. The traditional relations of the hierarchy are gone, and the only response left for the reader is a quiet desperation...