The Principles of Biology, 2 volumes
London: Williams and Norgate, 1864-1867. First printing. Hardcover. 8vo, publisher's pale gold-mauve cloth, good set; recent cloth over spine of first volume, no lettering on spine, light wear and discoloration to the spine cloth of the second volume and light fading to the top half of the rear board of that volume, contents very good, inner hinges all sound and strong, text unmarked, although the rear endpaper of the second volume has some penned notes by Robert Olby, the previous owner (his name is not on the book but it came from his collection); he was a historian of 19th and early 20th century biology and genetics with an impressive list of publications. "Survival of the fittest" first appears in this set, on p. 444 of the first volume. Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." Darwin responded positively to Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest" as an alternative to "natural selection", and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication published in 1868. (Wikipedia). Good. Item #H20682
Price: $850.00