And who is Thomas Malthus?

[Bob Parcelles,Jr.]

--- Martin Bailey <cmbb at sk.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> At the time of Thomas Malthus' writings, it was fashionable to
> consider how
> best to deal with the working classes: Give them more now that
> industrial
> and agricultural production was leaping ahead or keep them at a
> subsistence
> level.  Mathus was in the camp that declared that raising "the
> standard of
> living" ( a 20th century term) would result in the coarser classes
> having
> more children.  This increase in progeny would ultimately bring
> these folks
> back to subsistence levels of life.  Adam Smith, on the other hand,
> felt
> that giving the lower classes more would encourage them to be even
> more
> productive thereby further increasing the wealth of nations.
> 
> Adam Smith saw himself as a moral philosopher as I think Thomas
> Malthus did
> too.  Today, we classify Adam Smith as an economist and Mathus -
> for some
> reason or other by some - as either a biologist or an ecologist.
> 
> I was brought to my attention - offline - that predation is a major
> factor
> in keeping bugs and beasts from breeding themselves out of house
> and home.
> I do not disagree.  But the next question then becomes: What stops
> the
> predators from eating up all of their prey?
> 
> The most obvious answer is that bunny rabbits bred up faster than
> cruel fox
> can catch them.
> 
> Alas, the paleontologist tells us that all is a fairy tale.  The
> geological
> record is filled with extinctions going back for eons.  For one
> reason or
> another all sorts of things that were capable of cell division have
> died
> off.  Which is where Darwin comes into my ramblings.
> 
> But first things first.  It was Herbert Spencer who coined the
> expression
> "the survival of the fittest."  Social Darwinism.  Spencer stated
> that there
> would always be the rich - the fittest.  And the poor.  Darwin, on
> the other
> hand, (excuse the simplifications) pointed out that any particular
> organism'
> s ability to survive depended on fortuitous variations in its
> offspring.
> Changes that allowed the organism to deal with changes in its
> environment as
> they arose.
> 
> So the study of the emergence of sub-species in butterflies makes
> perfect
> sense.  The challenge is to tie these studies to environmental
> change if you
> want the rest of the world to listen to you.
> 
> And if you think that biology is not ideology, think again.  If
> Malthus or
> Spencer were alive today and citizens, not of Britain, but U.S.A.,
> they
> would be registered Republicans.
> 
> Martin Bailey
> 

Social Darwinism has no basis in fact and is one of the issues that
has lead to a "debate" as to evolution and "creationism" in its
strictest sense. These social scientists that have had very little
chance to employ scientific procedures have ade many contributions to
public knowlege that has resulted in much misinformation. 

Malthus was neither a biologisat or an ecologist but his theorem
could be applicable in a population only if all other facts are
constant or nearly so. That has ben proven many times with beetles in
"test tubes". 

Good thread. I am glad I started something good for a change.

Bob

=====
Bob Parcelles, Jr
Pinellas Park, FL
RJP Associates & Clean Millennium Movement (C2M)
rjparcelles at yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naturepotpourri
"Change your thoughts and you change your world."
- Norman Vincent Peale

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