Thomas Malthus is a a British economist and demographer who is famous for his theory of population. This theory stated that if the population of mankind were to grow uncontrollably, it would exceed the rate at which food is grown. He also believed that if it exceeded beyond this rate, then the population would crash due to a natural phenomena such as famine or disease. Another idea he developed was that naturally mankind is a lazy animal and would be complacent in life as long as there was food on the table. When the rate of food production is outweighed by the increase of population, mankind would decide to work harder to make up for the lack of food. Overall, this concept is necessary and is the reason mankind survives on Earth over other species.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/thomas-malthus-theory-of-population.html
Malthus's idea contributes to these concepts of evolution: resources are limited and the helpful traits that organisms have will change as the environment changes. The earth most definitely does not have unlimited resources to feed every person on the planet. If this were the case, no one would ever die go hungry, but throughout history, this has not been the case. Malthus's theory influences the idea of limited resources by establishing to mankind that even with the population at his time was not the perfect size because not every person was being fed. Therefore, an higher increase of the current population would most likely spark the natural phenomena he stated before. He also influences the ideas of adaptive traits because he states that mankind becomes complacent when there is enough food for everyone. When the amount of food one can obtain changes, the lazy attitudes of humans change. Laziness is an example of a trait that changes when the environment changes, with the environment being the supply of food. Ultimately, Darwin was influenced by these concepts to create his idea of natural selection. When resources are limited, which naturally happens due to the increase of human population, mankind will adapt and survive thus supporting the idea of natural selection.
Darwin could still develop the idea of natural selection without Malthus because natural phenomena
is not the only way the population would crash. It could also be caused by conflict of resources through wars and battles. If there are too many people for the resources provided, some people will do something about it, even if it means to fight one another. War and conflict is not always caused by overpopulation but sometimes from the human nature itself of bettering oneself. This is essentially the concept of natural selection in that people will fight one another because one may feel that others are weak and are wasting resources. War and conflict has nothing to do with Malthus's ideas.
The attitude of the church affected Darwin's work by making him hesitant to publish his work.
Darwin knew people would reject his ideas, so one could say that the church made his more more refined because he would have to make sure that ideas were as clear as possible before publishing it. He was presenting ideas that went against the Church and the best way to convince people is make sure that he explains it the best he could.
Without Thomas Malthus' work, Charles Darwin may not have been able to finalize his discovery of the theory of natural selection. I agree that Malthus was the most influencial person during this time. The way he described how population growth was far greater then the growth of resources was what led Darwin to see that organisms must fight for those resources and only the fittest survive. I think your choices of bullet points were great! You did a great job of explaining them. I like how you used the example of laziness as a trait that changes! Overall this was a great post!
ReplyDelete"This theory stated that if the population of mankind were to grow uncontrollably, it would exceed the rate at which food is grown."
ReplyDeleteMalthus was a little more precise than this. His point was that populations have the potential to grow exponentially (one of the bullet points) but that resources tend to only increase at a slower, arithmetic rate, creating a possible situation of populations outgrowing their food supply. Unless humans controlled their own reproduction, we would be faced with famine, war and disease, which would pare the population numbers back down to controllable levels.
I agree that Malthus contributed to the point about limited resources, but as an opponent of evolutionary thought, he made no contribution to the idea of the environment producing changes in organisms. "Laziness" is not a physical, adaptive trait. It is a judgmental, biased view of Malthus' which was just an interpretation of natural human behavior faced with the struggle to survive. Why struggle if you don't need to? Don't confuse Malthus' very negative view of humanity with concrete contributions to Darwin's work.
But there is another point that can be attributed to Malthus and that is the potential or exponential growth in populations.
While I see the point you are making in the third section, those factors existed before Darwin read Malthus' work and he didn't make these important connections even with them in existence, correct? It was only when he read Malthus' work that he had that "ah-ha" moment the helped put his ideas together, moment he describes in his 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)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html
Yes, there are those who suggest that the 20 year publishing delay helped Darwin create a theory that was perfected and unarguably correct. But does that mean his work wouldn't have been as important and ground-breaking if he had published after 10 years instead of 20? It is nice to look for a silver-lining in things, but it is also important to recognize the problems that arise when non-scientific influences prevent science from happening on its own time frame. What specifically was Darwin concerned about? What repercussions did he fear? Was he just concerned for himself or was he worried about how others would be impacted, such as his very religious wife?