Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 441
NATURAL SELECTION AND SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST excessive drought or excessive rains; there would also have been many scores of diseases attendant upon all such climatic changes. Whatever may have survived during the periods of these varying trials would not always be the giraffes and the meerkats, or the vermin for that matter. . In every changed context, the principle of the survival of the fittest would favour the survival of different contestants. Every calamity would have its own preferences. Looking at the issue of survival in relation to varying threats and challenges to life as it hazards its journey through a billion years of evolution, it is hard to visualize any survival at all. Little chance, if any, can be envisaged for the survival of all the forms of life, because different crises will have their own favourite targets which most often will not be the same. The poison for one category of life would be the meat for another. So the law of random selection would choose at random and continue to reject all that cross its path. . W •E HOPE that by now the reader will have fully comprehended the nature and dimension of the problems involved in the operation of the survival of the fittest and natural selection. It should be remembered here that the term 'Natural Selection' is not being comprehensively examined in all its areas of application. . We have only specifically taken up one of its many aspects to suit this context. . In Darwin's theory of biological evolution, as observed in comparatively more advanced species of life, the role of natural selection can be more easily discerned. . But there also, it is found to be inadequate in accepting the right values and discarding the wrong ones. . Again, it should be emphasized here that the phenomenon of natural selection under changing environments does not possess any instrument of effecting 428