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There is a huge literature on characterizing terms like fitness, adaptation, and natural selection, and trying to figure out how they fit within "evolutionary theory". Here are just a few that might be of particular relevance to us:

• Encyclopedia pieces by philosophers:
  • Brandon, Natural Selection, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Rosenberg and Bouchard, Fitness, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (chapters 3,4) - where he introduces his theory of natural selection
• Online here along with all other published writings of Darwin (and lots of other things) here
• Richard Lewontin, Adaptation (the original English version of "Adattamento" cited by Brandon)
• Susan Mills and John Beatty, The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness

Discussions of the propensity interpretation of fitness in light of effects of variance include:

• John Beatty and Susan Finsen (nee Mills), Rethinking the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness
• Elliott Sober, Two Faces of Fitness

In 1984, Elliott Sober's The Nature of Selection defended the view that natural selection is a force which causes evolutionary change (today sometimes called the "dynamical interpretation") which is still the focus of debate in philosophy. Ariew and Lewontin's piece is considered to be in the "statistical" camp which opposes the dynamical account.

One example of the tautology objection from a creationist is

• Tom Bethell, Darwin's Mistake
• Stephen Jay Gould's response to Bethell: Darwin's untimely burial
• More sophisticated responses from philosophers include chapter 2 of Sober's The Nature of Selection and chapter 3 of Philip Kitcher's (1982) Abusing Science

An example of how population geneticists think about fitness is Allen's Orr dual pieces:

• Orr, Absolute Fitness, Relative Fitness, and Utility
• Orr, Fitness and its Role in Evolutionary Genetics