Thomas Malthus has had a significant influence towards Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural selection. Malthus’s observation that impacted Darwin was that nature plants, animals, and humans are able to produce far more offspring than can survive. Unless family size was regulated, population would grow less and less due to food famine.
What is preventing organisms from reproducing at their potential? The reason why organisms are being prevented from reproducing at their potential is due to the lack of environment space and amounts of food.
Resources are limited. Just like the example of the rabbits, Malthus stated that we are able to produce far more offspring than can survive. Meaning that we do have the chose to produce as much offspring as we want, but we don't because we would not be able to help support the offspring with lack of food.
Organisms with better access to resources will be more successful in their reproductive efforts. With a bigger environment and a bigger supply of food, organisms will be able to produce offspring at their potential.
In a way Darwin might not be able to develop his theory of natural selection without the influence of Thomas Malthus. Malthus’s theory on population is basically the basis of Darwin’s theory. Malthus’s theory is human population is going to decrease over time because there is not enough resources to keep a mas population. Therefore, the most fit will be able to survive and reproduce. Where as Darwin’s theory is scarcity of resources, territory, etc. leads to the most fit to survive from competition and thus the survivors will therefore create more babies and their genes will be passed to the next generation, thereby creating more species with those fit genes.
Darwin also wrote about Malthus in his autobiography (1876)
"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, 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".
The attitude of the church did affect Darwin because back then the church had a significant power over people, when Darwin publicized his book. Many people felt like they’re religion was being questioned. Christian belief about species is that they were all created by God and started with two humans named Adam and Eve. Darwin’s theory completely disregarded the Christian belief and stated that species evolve within time. This later became a very controversial issue.
URL: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html
In general, good, with one qualifier. You give Malthus credit for more than he actually contributed. I agree with your first two bullet points, but Malthus had nothing to do with the third. He was solely concerned with human populations out-pacing their resources and trying to develop solutions to this problem. He never made the connection between differential survivorship and natural variation in populations. Darwin developed that idea on his own, but as a result of Malthus's work.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to have seen a bit more background work for the first section. There is a lot of interesting things regarding Malthus work.
Good job on the last paragraph. The idea was always controversial for those who take the teachings of the bible literally, which was why Darwin postponed publishing his work for more than 20 years. Now it is only controversial outside of the scientific community, not within.