1)Thomas Malthus had a positive influence over Darwin’s theory of Natural selection.
2)Thomas Malthus developed his theory by observing plants and animals produce more young than which could survive. Its reasonable to observe that if population is rising than its hard for the populations resources to keep up. Basically with the rapidness of population growth, their dependence is on how stable the availability of resources is. Malthus argued that even though human kind can produce more foods, he stated that that wouldn't be the case when it comes to needing the recourses into doing so. This in fact would be a harmful tribute to humankind if populations continued to increase rapidly. Malthus also proposed that the only way a population could obtain within its limited resources is by what he called "positive checks" such as disease, war, starvation. These contributed to a raise in death rates. He also proposed "preventative checks" which lowered birth rate as in birth control, late marriage and abstaining from marriage or sexual relations. With all this being said in one of Malthus inspirational essays, "an essay on the principle of population" which also had a huge impact on both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in their own discovery of theories.
3)>Resourses are limited: Our planet has limit of much it can hold and produce. There will not be enough resources available for all organisms to reproduce as many offspring as they can.
-I feel that this explains Malthus concept in which he believes that plants and animals produce more young than which could survive. Malthus explanation for the population producing more rapid than what is able to produce more foods and resources shows that Malthus was influential towards Darwins theory.
>All organisms have the potential of reproducing exponentially. Two rabbits are roughly capable of producing approximately an additional 200 rabbits in their lifetime. Imagine if all baby bunnies had 200 more baby bunnies, and so on. This is an example of exponential growth that has the potential of having us up to our eyeballs in rabbits. But we aren't up to our eyeballs in rabbits, are we?
-As Malthus described in his essay the only way population can stay in its limits is with positive checks. To keep the bunnies from over producing, the positive checks maintain the balance. Some forms of maintaing the balance could be by having the bunnies eat something that could harm them, or by a disease spreading through their population. Or other predators that are trying to survive and bunnies end up being their meals which causes a raise in deaths. This also seems to be influential in Darwins key points on the theory of evolution.
4) I feel that Malthus had a great impact on Darwins theory of natural selection because he then found his answer to the question of how new species came to be. He agreed with Malthus idea of population having an increase at a rapid rate then the resources do which lead Darwin into recognition for 'a struggle for existence.' He also saw how selection in nature could be explained such as those individuals with favorable variations would survive and reproduce, but those with unfavorable variations wouldn't. I feel that without the help from Malthus, Darwin’s explanation of evolution theory would not have been the same.
5) The attitude of the church towards Darwin affected his publication of the natural selection because it was thought that if these ideas and theories were to be accepted “the church would crash, the moral fabric of society would be torn apart and civilized man would return to savagery.” With that lingering on it lead to suspicion and a misunderstanding towards evolution that we still endure till today.
Hi Diana,
ReplyDeleteI too believe that Malthus had the most influence over Darwin and his work. Malthus laid the foundation on which Darwin worked with and developed. Malthus theorized about natural selection and survival of the fittest, which was the answer Darwin was looking for all along.
Isn't it interesting that he considered death, famine, and war to be "positive"?
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with your suggestion as to Malthus' contribution to Darwin's work, I think perhaps his greater contribution was to get Darwin to ask the question, "If there are not enough resources for all, and only some survive, is that survival random or are some more likely to survive than others?" This question of who's surviving, which (aside from Wallace) no one had really asked before was key to Darwin taking that mental leap to the idea of natural selection.
Nicely done.