The Fitness of the Environment, an Inquiry Into the Biological Significance of the Properties of Matter

DARWINIAN fitness is compounded of a mutual relationship between the organism and the environment. Of this, fitness of environment is quite as essential a. component as the fitness which arises in the process of organic evolution; and in fundamental characteristics the actual environment is the fittest possible abode of life. Such is the thesis which I seek to establish. This is not a novel hypothesis. In rudimentary form it has already a long history behind it, and it was familiar doctrine in the early nineteenth century. It presents itself anew as a result of the recent growth of the science of physical chemistry. In the study of fitness it has been the habit of biologists since Darwin to consider only the adaptations of the living organism to the environment. For them in fact the environment, in its past, present, and future, has been an independent variable, and it has not entered into any of the modern speculations to consider if by chance the material universe also may be subjected to laws which are in the largest sense important in organic evolution. Yet fitness there must be, in environment as well a.s in the organism. How, for example, could man adapt his civilization to water power if no water power existed within his reach? At first sight it may well seem that inquiry into such