Resulting from discussions with his father on the works of Condorcet and William Godwin, Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) published anonymously in 1798 his first and most famous work. Written as a polite attack on French post-revolutionary speculations on social and human perfectibility, this remains one of the most powerful statements of the limits to human hopes set by the tension between population growth and natural resources. Central to his philosophy was the belief that 'The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man'. The...
Resulting from discussions with his father on the works of Condorcet and William Godwin, Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) published anonymously in 1798 his ...