Survival of the Fittest?

I was reading back through some of my old high school papers and came across some of my notes from my human genetics class. In the notes I found an extremely interesting quote from a book we read entitled The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature:

"Species do not get better at surviving, their chances of extinction are random. The struggle for existence never gets easier. However well a species may adapt to its environment it can never relax, because its competitors and its enemies are also adapting to their riches. The world is competitive to the death. It does keep changing. But the world keeps coming back to where it started. The is change, but no progress"

The basis of this theory is that in order to understand human nature we have to picture the "Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who had to keep running just to stay in place...evolution is not about progress, but about changing in order to survive."



Change, not progress. What does it even mean to put these things in separate realms and then claim that one is more essential than the other? Is change not progress? Is positivity embedded in the definition of progress? Change is spared such connotation, is this why they can not be equated?

Maybe a better way to put it is in terms of adaptation and growth. adapting is not growing and growing does not equal survival. Growth is personal. It is something you do for yourself, a point of reflection. Adaptation is public. You do it for survival. Outside adaptation does not equal inner growth. You can believe something but not act on it, and not all of your actions reflect you're inner beliefs.

Looking at it this way, this theory makes sense to me. However, I'm not sure that I agree. Which is one of my favorite things about philosophy: comprehension of a premise does not necessitate agreement with it.