1. I feel that Charles Malthus was the person of the most positive influence on Charles Darwin and his work with his theory of Natural selection.
2. Thomas Malthus wasn't a scientist in the way Charles Darwin was, but rather he was an economist who was fascinated with the growth and decline of a population. Malthus was focused on the idea that as a population increases in number, the food supply would be limited to only those who could gain access to it. With a higher population, there would be more struggle over food, more people would face starvation and disease, and therefore only the most fit would survive.
3. The idea Thomas Malthus had about the rise of a population equaling a rise in competition for food fits a few bullet points of how evolution works. The first is "Limited resources," every species has a limited amount of resources they can use for survival so as their population rises, the limitation on the amount of resources available rises as well. The second point is "Who gets access to the limited resources." The ones who will gain access to the limited resources available to a certain population, are the ones who are the most fit to survive: the strongest, fastest, more agile, more camouflaged, what ever trait they have that gives them a higher chance at survival will give them a higher chance at the resources.
4. Just like with all aspects of science and math, if one person didn't discover something at the time they did, someone else along the way would eventually have. With only actually physically observing different populations of animals, Darwin surely would have noticed a trend with the population increasing along with the struggle for their resources. He would have been able to conclude that when there are more and more of a species, they will have to fight to survive and only the ones most fit will win.
5. Charles Darwin knew he would get backlash from the Church and many people who had strong beliefs at the time. There would be many people who would be angry with his claims, and even discount them because what the Church taught everyone at the time was believed as the only thing that was right and everything else was wrong.
Link about Charles Malthus:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html
I do agree that Malthus and Darwin influenced one another's work and fed off of each others theory's. I like how you said that Darwin didn't necessarily need Thomas's theory to complete his theory. It was great how you said that if Thomas didn't make his discovery it would have been discovered anyways by someone else and Darwin probably would have discovered it on his own at some point.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDarwin may have been able to come to the theory of natural selection without Malthus, but it is important to note all of the things he may not have discovered or written if he would have never come across the work of Malthus.
ReplyDeleteDarwin lived to be 73, and in his later years he published work such as "A biographical sketch of an infant" in 1877 and his "autobiographical memoir" he began to write in 1876. I believe that his work in natural selection would have taken much longer had he not read the works of Malthus, and he likely would have never gotten to these other pieces.
http://darwin-online.org.uk/timeline.html
You were on the right track with Malthus' work until you came to this line:
ReplyDelete"With a higher population, there would be more struggle over food, more people would face starvation and disease, and therefore only the most fit would survive."
No, Malthus had nothing to do with the concept of natural selection itself. He didn't touch on the question of *who* was surviving. He was only interested in the pattern of over-reproduction in general in human populations, something that didn't seem to happen in natural populations.
This point filters into your section on bullet points, so I'll provide more clarification:
Malthus was a mathematician, so he recognized mathematical patterns in nature. As such the very first point can be assigned to him, the recognition that natural populations have the potential of reproducing exponentially. Malthus recognized that natural populations tended to not outgrow their resources and sought to understand why (second bullet point). He recognized that resources are limited (third bullet point) in natural populations and this acts as a natural limit to reproduction. He then applied this idea to human populations and wondered why humans are also limited in their reproduction. He suggested that we have developed ways to avoid these natural limits and risk death, disease and famine if we don't rein in our population growth (he was a big fan of contraception).
Malthus never caught onto the idea that some organisms have better access to resources than others or those better adapted have better access. These were ideas Darwin developed after reading Malthus' work. Malthus himself didn't agree with the concept of evolution.
"Darwin surely would have noticed a trend with the population increasing along with the struggle for their resources. "
I agree that this is a possibility. But it shouldn't be ignored that even Darwin seemed to highlight what an 'ah-ha' moment he experienced upon reading Malthus' paper:
""... 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)
Good final conclusion, though it is important to recognize that his concerns were so great, he delayed publishing for more than 20 years, only publishing when he realized he might lose credit to Wallace. Was he only concerned for himself or for others as well?