Thomas Malthus was an English parson who published a book in 1797 titled
"Essay on the Principle of Population" The central theme of Malthus teachings were that population growth would always overpower food and supply growth. This would create hunger, diseases, and infinite struggle. Malthus warned his fellow Englishmen that no matter how many policies were created to help the poor they would never work because of population growth. A nation could easily double it's population in a few decades leading to famine and misery for everyone. Malthus made his economic arguments by rather than looking at human beings as individuals, he looked at them as groups of individuals, all who were subject to the same laws of behavior. In this study Malthus proved that the same forces of fertility and starvation that humans used, animals and plants used them as well.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/history_07
The points that Malthus had the biggest impact were :
- All organisms have the potential of reproducing exponentially- Malther knew that we as humans could reproduce to the point that we would over run the earth and we would run out of supplies such as food and land to survive.
- Whats preventing organisms from reproducing at their potential- Malther stated that the only reason that humanity was not in famine was because it's growth was affected by plagues, infanticide, people putting off marriage until middle age, and natural deaths occurring.
- Resources are limited- Malther's whole argument was that the earth has a limited amount of resources and once they are used up humanity would starve.
- Who gets better to these limited resources- Malther argued that who was better equipped would be the ones to survive if there was a famine and only the strongest would stay and the weaker ones would eventually be gone.
Darwin could not have developed his theory of natural selection without the influence of Malther. Before Malther, Darwin believed that the population grew until they were aligned with existing resources, and the stabilized. Darwin considered some of the competitors in Malthus theory about having the less prepared would die in struggle leaving only those with stronger traits alive. Through this Darwin developed evolution through natural selection. Malthus work helped inspire Darwin to refine natural selection by stating a reason for competition. The book Malthus wrote inspired Darwin to begin his whole process on evolution, so without Malthus Darwin would have not gotten where he did.
The scientific community was reluctant to pursue evolution due to the social repercussions of the time, with the church frowning on any ideas that seemed out of line with the religious and biblical doctrine. The church would scorn Darwin and that motivated him to do better and establish his name along with his theory.
