In
1798, Thomas Malthus published “Essay on the Principle of Population”, a piece
that would later be highly commended and utilized by Charles Darwin.
- Despite his role as a minster of the Church of England, Malthus suggested numerous theories that strayed from the optimistic social philosophies of his day.
- Malthus’ most popular theories were those on population, which he wrote about in six editions of “Essay on the Principle of Population”.
- Malthus suggested that all populations grow at an exponential rate, while food rations grow at an arithmetic rate.
- Malthus believed that starvation and illnesses were natural consequences of population growth.
Thomas Malthus believed that the human
population would inevitably decrease over the years because there are not
enough food rations to support the ever-growing population. Malthus suggested
this would result to competition and the fittest would get the food, reproduce,
and spread their genes. This is the basis of Darwin's theory, natural
selection, which suggests that scarcity of resources leads to “survival of the
fittest”. Therefore only the survivors will have the ability to reproduce, sending
their genes to the next generation, which in turn creates more of the species
with the modified genes.
I don’t believe that Darwin would
have been able to develop his theory of “natural selection” without Thomas
Malthus’ influence and ideals on population. Malthus came very close to
discovering “natural selection” on his own. He understood that exponential
growth was challenged by limited resources and that there was competition
within populations for those limited resources. The only things that he failed
to recognize was that his theories could be applied to all species and that
variation existed amongst the species.
For centuries, scientist feared the
impending doom that would surround them if they challenged the church on an
issue. For much of Darwin’s career, he too was scared to publish his findings.
However, Darwin realized that if he waited too long, he may not be recognized
for his discoveries. Therefore, Darwin decided to rise above the churches’
influence and publish his first book, On the Origin of Species.
External Sources: http://www.allaboutscience.org/malthus-faq.htm
Check your resource against the "Bad Resources" page on the course Blackboard site. It is actually a religious/creationist/intelligent design site and is unreliable.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, you have Malthus' work described correctly, but Malthus never made the connection between "fitness" and the limited resources. He was primarily concerned with human populations and envisioned starvation, plague, and death, and how to prevent that (he was a great proponent for population control). He did not carry the idea out to one group surviving over the others. That was Darwin who did that with reference to natural non-human populations.
I agree that Malthus' work may have been the key to Darwin's work, but again it is incorrect to think that Malthus was on the path to uncovering the concept of natural selection. He never came close to making that connection between competition for resources and its implications and that wasn't the focus of his work.
Can you be a little more explicit in what you mean by "impending doom" in the last section? What repercussions did Darwin face in the publishing of his work?
thank you
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