I think it is safe to say that most everyone has heard the name Charles Darwin and his theory that goes along with his name; the theory of evolution by natural selection. What some of you may not know is that he was heavily inspired by the works of an English economist by the name of Thomas Malthus.
Malthus had written a book titled, "An Essay on the Principle of Population" which held the belief that growing populations would defeat resources needed for survival. This theory led him to advocate for limiting resources by arguing that if resources were limited than that would help to impede population growth. As you can see in the following article https://www.allaboutscience.org/thomas-malthus-faq.htm, Malthus was very clear in his intentions and believed in God's had a plan to "stop populations from exploding" and that without limiting our resources, our world would "quickly become overcrowded".
While Malthus argued that populations would defeat the amount of resources needed for survival, Darwin saw this as a means to further his theory of evolution by expanding upon those ideals and stating that population growth and limiting of resources could lead to competition, (those who were more equipped to withstand limitations would survive), which was the essence of natural selection. Who gets better access to these limited resources? Only the strong survive. By Malthus's focusing limiting resources, he inadvertently inspired Darwin and even though Malthus did not seek to become such an inspiration, (as he was not interested in how species were evolving and changing), his writings provided a way for Darwin to "refine" the idea of natural selection.
I believe that there is a chance that Darwin could have developed his theory of natural selection without the help of Malthus' book; however, I do not believe it would the theory we have come to know today. Natural selection means what it does today because of Darwin's introduction to Malthus' writings, specifically that "population size is always limited by the amount of available food and water" and that being the cause for a constant struggle to exist. Darwin himself attributes his development of natural selection to his findings in Malthus' essay and stated the following, "it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of a new species" (F. Darwin, 1950, pp 53-54).
In order for Darwin to make his findings public it would've meant he was directly challenging the christian belief that that "all life on earth was created by God", which would have most likely meant a certain death by fire. It wasn't until new world discoveries were being made and mathematicians and scientists made advances that helped to pave the way to introducing new theories.
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Hello Anita Kornik, I found your post to be very intriguing! I too wrote on Thomas Malthus, though I find myself only agreeing with you on about 50%. I think it is interesting that you would say that Darwin could have developed the natural selection theory without the previous works of Malthus, as most other students would say otherwise. After reading your post, I am slowly changing my mind. As you said, Darwin would probably be able to create his theory. You then went on to say how it would most likely be a different theory, with a variant method or conclusion. This was a neat and outside of the box comment that I enjoyed. Until now, I had always seen it as 'would Darwin have developed the same identical theory without the help of Matthus?' I see now that it is not so black and white, and I hope to bring this viewpoint into other posts and conversations. Thank you for your effort!
ReplyDeleteAn initial comment on your sources: When using online sources, it is easy to get stuck with unreliable sources, and unfortunately you have found one. The AllAboutScience site is actually part of a site called AllAboutGod, which is a religious site. This doesn't automatically mean their information is wrong, but unfortunately in this case, their information is biased and misinformed. ry to stick with scientific sites for sources such as: Educational sites such as universities, scientific literature, scientific sites such as Discovery or National Geographic.
ReplyDeleteYou have the basics on Malthus' work, but more detail is needed to tell your readers the whole story. Malthus made the points you raise in regard to human populations, but he compared those populations to natural populations, who behaved quite differently. They seemed to have some type of limiting factor that prevented them from outgrowing their resources. It was this point that caught Darwin's attention, particularly the idea of this "limiting factor" which he later understood as competition for resources, the basis for his mechanism of natural selection.
I agree that "limited resources" can be directly attributed to Malthus, but the question of "who gets those resources" is not a question Malthus asked. He didn't care, since his focus was on human populations. There is another point that can be listed here, that of the potential of populations to grow exponentially.
I appreciate that you don't want to deal with absolutes in your next section. :-) Yes, there is always a possibility the Darwin could have developed this without Malthus, but like you, I don't think he could. I like quote you included, as this seems to suggest that Darwin would agree with us.
"...which would have most likely meant a certain death by fire"
No. By Darwin's time, no one was dying by fire if they displeased the church, but that doesn't mean they couldn't make life difficult. So let's think realistically about what Darwin's concerns might have been. After all, he delayed publishing by more than 20 years, so we need to try to understand why. Was he only worried about himself or was he also worried about how his family might be impacted by publishing? Remember that his wife was very devout. How might she have been impacted if the church responded negatively to Darwin? Could he have been worried about how his children might have been affected? Was he concerned about his own social or professional status? Remember that scientists don't work in a vacuum. They can be influenced not just by academics but also by social, cultural and personal issues.
Acorn, I've read a few different Malthus blog posts and I think that your is the most well comprehensive. It is interesting to me that although Malthus' work is based upon human populations and their consuming of resources he also makes the comparison that this is similar to how animals act. I think that perhaps he was wrong about that (since we do study humans and animals differently). I also agree with you that Darwin could have come up with a comparable theory on his own. I used the same argument in my blog post. I look forward to being intillectually challenged in further posts of yours.
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