Historical Influences on Darwin

Assignment 2: Historical Influences on Darwin

1. I believe the English economist Thomas Malthus had the most influence over Darwin’s development of the theory of natural selection.

2. Thomas Malthus came up with the idea that populations would always be limited by available resources. He wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population which explained that even if human beings could produce more food for increasing populations that a lack of other general resources would still cause famine and suffering if human populations continued to increase. He was arguing the fact that there needed to be limits to human population growth and actually had no interest in the changes species go through over time. Yet, Darwin was very influenced by this writing and extended these principles to all organisms and the theory of natural selection.

Online Source: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html

3. There several bullet points in “How does evolution work?” that deal with resources but the one that most directly affected by Thomas Malthus was “Resources are Limited”. The fact that resources are limited was the main point in the essay that Thomas Malthus wrote arguing for limits on population growth. Some of the other bullet points affected were “What is preventing an organism from reproducing at its potential?”, which of course are resources available. “Organisms with better access to resources will be more successful in their reproductive efforts.” And “Who gets better access to these limited resources?” It really seems clear that Malthus had a tremendous positive effect on Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection.

4. It really is clear that Darwin could not have completely developed the idea of natural selection without the contribution of the idea of populations being limited by available resources that Thomas Malthus came up with. Darwin’s theory of natural selection is really based on who can have better access to resources, can have more reproduction and therefore can survive while other species go instinct.

5. The attitude of the church caused Darwin to be very careful about publishing his theory on natural selection and waiting from the time of his first written summary of natural selection in 1844, until 1858 when he finally had his Theory of Natural Selection Published. His wife Emma was also very religious and did not like the fact that his ideas were completely contrary to the teachings of the church.