thomas malthus most influential
I believe that Tomas Malthus was the most significant to the scientific community because he was the one who wrote the essay on the principle of population which led to the theory of natural selection. During his studies he noticed that when resources were plentiful then it led to population growth and less predators. However if there are not enough resources or food then this would be a huge problem and eventually lead to famine and starvation which would decrease the population size because nobody would want give birth to their children during a low economic times.
Without Thalmus' studies I believe they wouldn't have been able to come to the conclusions that they did and would have not discovered natural selection. It seems that Malthu's studies had a positive impact on both Darwin and Wallace because they ended up using Malthus' principles to their advantage and expanded upon his theories. They found that when population size is limited by the availibility of resources then there will most likely be competition.
The church opposed Darwin's theory of evolution because it changed many individual's thoughts on how life came to be. Back then people held on strongly to their religious beliefs so the public was not very accepting of his book. It frightened most people because they feared that the theory of evolution overruled the theory of creation and led to some people questioning their beliefs. Not until later on after Darwin's death did people become more open minded and begin to accept his scientific ideas.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html
"...which would decrease the population size because nobody would want give birth to their children during a low economic times."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure he argued this. He was saying we SHOULD reduce our birth rate to avoid the starvation and famine.
Darwin took Malthus' work one step further than you identify. It's not just the presence of competition that is key, its the question of "Who survives and who doesn't" that was important.
Good job on the last paragraph. It didn't take the scientific community very long to accept his views, radical they may have seemed at the time. It was the general population which had (and in some instances still has) difficulty with Darwin's work.
Make sure you do a spell check on your post before publishing, and check to see if the subject's name is spelled correctly. :-) It will present better.