JF Ptak Science Books: Survival of Features: Darwin in Architecture and Art, 1875

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Survival of Features: Darwin in Architecture and Art, 1875

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

[Source: Building News, April 2, 1875]

This is a curious pair of articles, both of which appeared 13 and 16 years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.. (1859). The "survival of the fittest" used in conjunction with good and bad architecture is somewhat loosely affiliated with Darwin though it employs a term that was actually coined by Herbert Spencer in his book on Darwin and evolution that was published in 1864. (Here it is: "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."-Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology of 1864, volume 1, page 444.) It is an interesting idea that employing the ideas of evolution to areas of study like art and architecture, and not without some merit.