Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2013 number 1

Darwinism appeared to be the final trait in the mechanistic picture of the world; thus, it put all natural sciences on the mechanical basis. Ch. Darwin considered natural selection as an external factor which improved the morphological organization of individuals when they adapted to changing environmental conditions. H. Spencer offered the term survival of the fittest which, in his view, more accurately reflected the essence of the evolutionary factor, viz. the increase in the number of individuals with higher fertility. But his term had an absolutely another sense, in comparison with Darwin’s one. The synthetic theory of evolution uses the concept of natural selection in the Spencerian sense but with a genetic tinge.