1. Thomas Malthus had a tremendous influence over Charles Darwin. Though Malthus was not a scientist, he understood and studied the growth and decline of populations. Darwin studied the same field and found it to be important in explaining the theory of evolution and what he called "survival of the fittest".
2. Malthus was best known for his work and theories on population growth. A professor of history and political economy, Malthus wrote his most popular piece titled “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798. He had recognized that it was possible for a population to outgrow its resources. If this was the case, the population was then exposed to starvation and disease among other struggles. The only way for the population to avoid such circumstances would be to control the growth of the population.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/malthus_thomas.shtml
3. The bullet point titled “Resources are limited” is an idea that strings together the theory of Malthus and the theory of Darwin. Malthus was known for recognizing that the resources of any population were limited, and it was up to the population to keep itself small enough to not outgrow the resources. Darwin was able to take this idea and build off of it into “survival of the fittest” in which those populations that are not controlled, only the strong survive. This is the theory of natural selection.
4. Darwin may not have developed his theory without reading the work of Malthus. Darwin has said himself that it was the influence of Malthus that got him thinking about many of the theories of evolution.
5. Darwin had the courage to bring to light the ideas that went against the beliefs of that time. The church was very powerful during this time and often times those who spoke out against the word of god were ostracized, threatened, imprisoned, or killed (Such as Lucilio Vanini in 1616 who was burned at the stake for questioning the existence of god)
http://www.executedtoday.com/2010/02/09/1619-lucilio-vanini-aka-giulio-cesare/
I wrote about Thomas Malthus as well and I agree that he was inspirational to the development of Darwin own theories. However; I disagree that Darwin would not have come up with his theories without Malthus. I feel that Darwin would have came up with his theory of natural selection at some point in time. Lucky Malthus was able to give Darwin a huge head start in developing his theory.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting about question #4 is we just have no clue what would have happened.
Great post really. I enjoyed reading it.
In general, good description of Malthus' work. For clarification, his conclusions were drawn on human populations, though he came to these conclusions after noting that ONLY human populations seemed to have this problem of outgrowing available resources. Natural populations seemed to naturally control their reproduction to stay in limits of their resources. It was this finding that intrigued Darwin.
ReplyDeleteNote: Malthus was a political economist but I don't know if he was a professor.
I agree that Malthus can be traced to limited resources, but as a mathematician, he can also be traced to the idea of exponential growth and the recognition that natural populations don't tend to succeed in this growth pattern.
Yes, Darwin did seem to recognize how significant Malthus' ideas were to his work in Darwin's own writings:
"... it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work".
Charles Darwin, from his autobiography. (1876)
It did take some bravery to bring his work to publication, though by Darwin's time, imprisonment and killing were not chosen methods of response. Being ostracized was, however. But Darwin delayed publication for more than 20 years. It is important to recognize that this delay was at least partially due to concerns over the church's response to the theory. Was Darwin concerned only for himself or also for others?