Thomas
Malthus
1. I
believe Thomas Malthus has the most influence on Charles Darwin’s theory of
natural selection.
2. The
contribution Thomas Malthus made to the scientific community was mainly in his Essay on the Principle of Population where
he stated that the human population will always grow faster than its resources.
He talked about the struggle to survive, and with all that being said he
inspired Charles Darwin to develop his theory of natural selection.
3. The
key points most affected by Malthus were: All organisms have the potential of
reproducing exponentially, but resources are limited and that prevents
reproducing. He explained this by saying humans will always grow faster than
its resources and Darwin built upon this knowledge by stating this with all
living organisms.
4. I
do not think Darwin could have developed his theory of natural selection without
the ideas of Malthus or the other four individuals on that list. I say this
because he was inspired by each and every one of them but he put their ideas
together with his own and was able to come up with something they could not
have.
5. I
believe that the attitude of the churches affected Darwin tremendously, because
he was going against their beliefs and at that time he could have been looked
at as an outcast and no one would have respected him if his theory ended up
being wrong.
6. The
online source I used for this assignment was http://www.allaboutscience.org/malthus-faq.htm
because I was not able to get into the COC Library Database.
I would agree with you in regards to each person presented on the list greatly influenced Darwin's work. Darwin was able build on his hypothesis by studying the different areas of data collected by each individual which in turn helped complete his own theory of evolution.
ReplyDeleteInitial comment: Don't be afraid to expand your posts. Make sure you are completely addressing the points in the guidelines. Show me what you know!
ReplyDeleteThe key to Malthus' work is that he noticed that natural, non-human populations tend to allow natural forces to control population size, so they don't outgrow their resources. Human populations tend to be impervious to these forces and outgrow their resources, leading to other factors that bring population size down, like disease and famine. It was this recognition of natural limiting factors on non-human populations that sparked Darwin's attention and led him to think of competition for limited resources.
Good selection of bullet points.
Yes, all scientists build their work off of the work of others, but to say that all were indispensable to Darwin is overstating the case. Even those scientists were not working in a vacuum and were surrounded by other researchers who may have stepped into their place. That said, while I rarely like to give too much credit to any one scientist for his influence and importance over the success of another, I am willing to make an exception in Malthus' case (Lyell is another I would consider an exception). Malthus seems to have provided the key Darwin needed to put together all the pieces of his research puzzle. Darwin even seems to suggest this in his notes:
"... 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) http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html
Okay on your final discussion, but do you think Darwin was only concerned about how this would impact him? Was he concerned about anyone else?