1. In my opinion Darwin's theory of natural selection was mostly influenced by Thomas Malthus because of his essay On the principle of Population, by studying his essay Darwin was able to discover that when population size is limited by source availability there is constant competition and according to the book "Introduction to Anthropology" , competition among individuals is the ultimate key to understanding natural selection. This was later reflected on Darwin's theory of natural selection, he said "It a once stuck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed." This clearly demonstrates how much Malthus influenced on Darwin's thinking because Malthus was worried about overpopulation and not enough resources and Darwin went further and discovered that the increase of offspring created competition for survival.
2. According to the website All About Science , Malthus contribution to science was the concern that in nature humans were reproducing too fast and that resources wouldn't be able to reproduce as fast to have enough resources for everyone, according to the website All About Science he encouraged the poor to have smaller families due to their limited economic possibilities to produce enough resources for their families.
3.How does evolution work ? Malthus proposed that massive population growth would leave us without resources, that nature wouldn't keep up to produce enough resources for bigger populations. Malthus essay influenced Darwin's theory of natural selection because he was able to see that population growth increased competency between siblings to survive which also provided more resources, Darwin's theory an today's population helped prove his theory that nature is able to keep up with big big populations, more than 7 billion people in the world and we have enough resources for all of us!
4. I believe that Darwin wouldn't have done his theory of natural selection without the influence of Malthus's essay because he was the one that inspired him to discover natural selection
5.The church attitude toward he new discoveries of evolution were not welcomed, church had and has the belief that everything in this world was created by God, in the time thiis discoveries were being made the teachings of Christianity were the only truth and Darwin was raised that way so he had to overcome his own doubts and past and values,
An initial comment on your sources: When using online sources, it is easy to get stuck with unreliable sources, and unfortunately you have found one. The AllAboutScience site is actually part of a site called AllAboutGod, which is a religious site. This doesn't automatically mean their information is wrong, but we should be using science sources for a science class.
ReplyDeleteIn my old Blackboard course, I had a separate page with a guide on how to choose good sources and avoid bad ones. Canvas won't allow for that much flexibility, unfortunately. Try to stick with scientific sites for sources such as: Educational sites such as universities, scientific literature, scientific sites such as Discovery or National Geographic.
Good initial description of Malthus' work and good job connecting his key points and the logical path Darwin took those points in developing his own theory.
The third section asked you to select the bullet points in the guidelines that can best be applied to Malthus' contribution to Darwin's work. You discuss overpopulation and issue of resource availability, but don't directly identify the bullet points that apply. The two that would apply directly to Malthus would be the first that talks about exponential population growth and the point on "resources are limited".
I agree with your conclusion in the next section. I rarely argue that any one person could be indispensable to the work of another, but I'm willing to go there with Malthus (and with Lyell, actually) and Darwin himself seems to confirm that in his own writings (from your own source). He was facing mountains of data and was having difficulty putting all of it together in a coherent mechanism until he came upon Malthus' paper:
"...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
Not sure if you actually finished the last section? It ends in a comma and the thought seems incomplete. Darwin delayed publishing for more than 20 years. The question is, why? And how did the influence of the church play a role in this delay? What were Darwin's concerns? And was he only worried about himself or was he also worried about how his family might be impacted by publishing?