Protein Synthesis: Blog Post

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1) Thomas Malthus had the greatest positive influence on Charles Darwin's development of the theory of Natural selection.

2) Thomas Malthus was not a scientist. Malthus was an economist who wrote, Essay on the Principle of Population, thought about how populations were effected by resources. He concluded that populations growth will out grow the number of resources. Population will only grow to the limit of essential supplies and population growth would be halted by poverty and war. However, Malthus believed that famine and poverty were the caused by a divine hand. He believed that God was preventing man from becoming sloths.

3)Malthus ideas comes striking close to Darwin's theory of Natural selection. Malthus knew that resources would be a limiting factor and that an organism, in this case man, have the potential of reproducing exponentially. Where Malthus and Darwin differ the divine institution of poverty and famine. Darwin believed the struggle to survive was natural while Malthus believed it was the work of God.

4) Charles Darwin could not have developed his theory of natural selection without the influence and ideas of Thomas Malthus. Charles Darwin wrote in his biography,
"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long- continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, 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".
Malthus sparked the idea of "survival of the fittest" into Darwin's mind which directly cause the development of the theory of Natural selection.

5)The Church of England did not accept Darwin's ideas in his publication of On the Origin of Species. The Church, for many years before the books publication, stated many of the bibles passage were to be taken metaphorically. The Church had no problem with the general idea of evolution because after all this could have been God's plan. The problem lies with the idea of Natural selection. Natural selection suggests that all organism fight to survive while God watches unsympathetically. A lineal evolution might have been accepted but Darwin's ideal of evolution show that nature is appalling.

sources
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/360609/Thomas-Robert-Malthus/222944/Malthusian-theory
https://sites.google.com/site/qitranscripts//transcripts/7x06