Thomas Robert Malthus Popular Books

Thomas Robert Malthus Biography & Facts

Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to use abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war, famine, and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible. Malthus considered population growth as inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behavior. Malthus wrote that "the increase of population is necessarily limited by subsistence," "population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase," and "the superior power of population repress by moral restraint, vice, and misery." Malthus criticized the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor. He supported taxes on grain imports (the Corn Laws). His views became influential and controversial across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Malthus's failure to predict the Industrial Revolution was a frequent criticism of his theories. Malthus laid the "...theoretical foundation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate, both scientifically and ideologically, on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries." He remains a much-debated writer. Early life and education Thomas Robert Malthus was the sixth of seven children of Daniel Malthus and Henrietta Catherine, daughter of Daniel Graham, apothecary to kings George II and George III, and granddaughter of Thomas Graham, apothecary to kings George I and George II. Henrietta was depicted alongside her siblings in William Hogarth's painting, The Graham Children (1742). Malthus was born at The Rookery, a "small elegant mansion" at Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey, which his father had bought—at that time called Chertgate Farm—and converted into "a gentleman's seat"; the family sold it in 1768 and moved to "a less extensive establishment at Albury, not far from Guildford". Malthus had a cleft lip and palate which affected his speech; such birth defects had occurred in previous generations of his family. His friend, the social theorist Harriet Martineau, who was hard of hearing, nevertheless stated that due to his sonorous voice he was the only person she could hear well without her ear trumpet. William Petersen and John Maynard Keynes describe Daniel Malthus as "a gentleman of good family and independent means [...] [and] a friend of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau". Daniel Malthus was son of Sydenham Malthus, who was a clerk of Chancery and director of the South Sea Company; he was also "proprietor of several landed properties in the Home Counties and Cambridgeshire". Sydenham Malthus's father, Daniel, had been apothecary to King William and later to Queen Anne; Daniel's father, Rev. Robert Malthus, was appointed vicar of Northolt, Middlesex (now West London) under the regicide Cromwell, but "evicted at the Restoration"; he was described as "an ancient divine, a man of strong reason, and mighty in the Scriptures, of great eloquence and fervour, though defective in elocution", due to "a very great impediment in his utterance" which has been concluded to be likely to have been a cleft palate. The young Malthus received his education at the Warrington Academy from 1782, where he was taught by Gilbert Wakefield. Warrington was a dissenting academy, which closed in 1783. Malthus continued for a period to be tutored by Wakefield at the latter's home in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire. Malthus entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1784. While there, he took prizes in English declamation, Latin and Greek, and graduated with honours, Ninth Wrangler in mathematics. His tutor was William Frend. He took the MA degree in 1791, and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College two years later. In 1789, he took orders in the Church of England, and became a curate at Oakwood Chapel (also Okewood) in the parish of Wotton, Surrey. Population growth Malthus came to prominence for his 1798 publication, An Essay on the Principle of Population. He wrote the original text in reaction to the optimism of his father and his father's associates (notably Jean-Jacques Rousseau) regarding the future improvement of society. He also constructed his case as a specific response to writings of William Godwin (1756–1836) and of the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794). His assertions evoked questions and criticism, and between 1798 and 1826 he published six more versions of An Essay on the Principle of Population, updating each edition to incorporate new material, to address criticism, and to convey changes in his own perspectives on the subject. The Malthusian controversy to which the Essay gave rise in the decades following its publication tended to focus attention on the birth rate and marriage rates. The neo-Malthusian controversy, comprising related debates of many years later, has seen a similar central role assigned to the numbers of children born. The goal of Malthusian theory is to explain how population and food production expand, with the latter experiencing arithmetic growth and the former experiencing exponential growth. The controversy, however, concerns the relevance of Malthusian theory in the present world. This hypothesis is inapplicable in a number of ways. First, the hypothesis is rendered irrelevant, due to a disregard for technological advancement. This is because food production has increased as a result of technological advancements such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Second, the mathematical model employed to formulate the hypothesis is incorrect since it was constrained to England's specific situation. Other findings, such as food production exceeding population increase, may be borne out if the modeling could employ wide locations like Australia. The Malthusian hypothesis is also limited by social change about family size, as individuals tend to prefer a manageable family owing.... Discover the Thomas Robert Malthus popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Thomas Robert Malthus books.