Self-study
The familiar slogan "survival of the fittest" is popularly used to express the claim, often mistakenly attributed to evolutionary biologists, that the fittest are most likely to survive. ████████ ██████████ ███ ███ ████ █████████ ██ ████ █████ ██████ ██ █████████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ ██████ ████████ ████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ███ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ████████ █████ ████ █████ ██ ███████ █████ ██ ██ █ █████████ ███ ██ ██ ███████ ███████████ ███ ██ ██████████ █████████
Summary
The phrase “survival of the fittest” isn’t informative or of any scientific interest. Why not? Because based on the biological definition of “fittest,” the phrase really just means that the creatures most likely to survive are the the ones who are most likely to survive. And that’s just a tautology (i.e., it’s completely self-evident).
Notable Assumptions
The author demonstrates that “survival of the fittest” is a tautology, but then concludes that it’s not informative and not of scientific interest. So he must assume that if a claim is a tautology, then it’s not informative and not of scientific interest.
16.
The argument above depends on ████████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ██████████
a
All claims that ███ ██ ██████████ ████████ ███ ████████████
This means if something isn’t informative, then it’s not of scientific interest. But the argument doesn’t suggest that because the slogan isn’t informative, it isn’t of scientific interest. It simply reasons that the slogan is both not informative and not of scientific interest. There’s no need for the two characteristics to have a direct relationship to each other.
b
Only claims that ███ ████ ███ ██ ██████████ █████████
The author isn’t drawing his conclusion from the fact that “survival of the fittest” is true; he’s drawing it from the fact that the slogan is a tautology (i.e., self-evident). So he doesn’t need to assume anything about the relationship between truth and scientific interest.
c
Popular slogans are ██████ ███████████ ██ ██ ██████████ █████████
The author doesn’t need to assume anything about what’s generally true of popular slogans. It could be that popular slogans are almost always informative and of scientific interest. He can still argue that this one popular slogan is not informative and of no scientific interest.
d
Informative scientific claims ██████ ███ █████ ██ ███ ███ ████ ███ █████████ █████
The author assumes that informative claims cannot be tautologies, not that they can’t use terms in popularly used ways. Whether or not some informative claims use terms in popularly used ways has no effect on whether “survival of the fittest,” specifically, is an informative claim.
e
The truth of █ █████████ ██████████ █████ ██ ███ ██████████ ███ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██████████ █████████
The author assumes that a tautology is not of scientific interest, even if it’s a true claim. So he must likewise assume that being true isn’t sufficient for a claim to be of scientific interest. If he didn’t assume this—if truth were sufficient for a claim to be of scientific interest—then “survival of the fittest” would be of scientific interest, and the conclusion would be anti-supported.