Historical Background
Evolutionary Perspective-Malthus and Darwin
Thomas Robert Malthus, in his major work originally published in 1816, “Essay on the Principle of Population (1968), projected a gloom and doom scenario for the human race in what he surmised to be a losing battle between population growth and an adequate food supply. Simply put, humans would multiply at a exponential rate (2, 4, 8, 16, etc.) while increasing food production only would occur at an arithmetic rate (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). As a dire consequence, the human species would far outstrip its subsistence capacity, unless population growth was checked by such agents as famine and disease. We will have a closer look at the Malthusian doctrine later on, but for now it is important to note that it was Malthus who helped clarify for Charles Darwin a vexing problem he had regarding evolution. Darwin was searching for an understanding of how change would take place over time in a population, and in 1838 it was the writing of...
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Meier, R.J. (2004). Population Control. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29905-X_32
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