In
my opinion, Thomas Malthus is most likely the one to have had the
most influential impact on Charles Darwin's natural selection in a
positive way. Malthus did not necessarily have an interest in
species change, however, had an eye for the limits to human
population growth. Malthus had written An
Essay on the Principle of Population,
which had caught Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace's eye. Even
though Darwin and Wallace had discovered natural selection
separately, Malthus' ideas inspired both of them. With Malthus'
principles in his head, Darwin decided to take them further and
applied the principles to not only humans, but to all organisms.
Because Malthus was interested in the way human population was
growing, the limited resources humans had effected the way the
population was growing. This had an impact on Thomas Malthus' way of
reading into the way humans live. The resources that are available
to survive are obviously limited, which means there are organisms
competing to survive. If some organisms do not get the resources
they need, they will sadly die because they have not fulfilled their
basic needs. And in order to survive, according to Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs, an individual, or organism, needs to satisfy
their basic needs of food and water. For natural selection to occur,
there needs to be competition or else this world would be way over
populated with all living organisms because no one would die. Some
organisms are more “fit” for the battle of resources, which means
they are more likely to survive over others. Finally once the basic
needs are met, the organisms can now start to reproduce. These
survival traits can be passed down to their off springs, enabling
them to survive in the future. I feel like Darwin would not have
been able to develop the theory of natural selection without Thomas
Malthus' ideas. Charles Darwin would not have known to create the
ideas Malthus had come up with. Darwin had the opportunity to take
what he had been inspired with and apply it to something he had an
interest in. The way species changes were happening were
anti-Christian because it gave off a different way Christians had
known the evolution theory was. They were not following the
Christian expectations of how evolution was. In my opinion, it did
not really affect Charles Darwin because he has no interest in
religion so why should he follow the way Christians view evolution.
http://evolution.about.com/od/Darwin/tp/People-Who-Influenced-Charles-Darwin.htm
