Quote:
Originally Posted by KathyT
To my knowledge, there was not family planning, condoms, and prescription birth control in the middle ages.
Perhaps the birth control of the middle ages was a gun to the head? What else could you mean?
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I mean there have been people predicting over population since the middle ages....nothing new...and certainly not new now.
and look...a religious figure...surprise
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13 February 1766 – 23 December 1834),[1] was a British scholar, influential in political economy and demography.[2][3] Malthus popularised the economic theory of rent.[4]
Malthus has become widely known for his analysis whereby societal improvements result in population growth which, he states, sooner or later gets checked by famine, disease, and widespread mortality. He wrote in the context of the popular view, in 18th century Europe, that saw society as improving, and in principle as perfectible.[5] William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, for example, believed in the possibility of almost limitless improvement of society. So, in a more complex way, did Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose notions centered on the goodness of man and the liberty of citizens bound only by the social contract, a form of popular sovereignty.
Malthus saw such ideas of endless progress towards a utopian society as vitiated because of the dangers of population growth: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".[6] As an Anglican clergyman, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour.[7] Believing that one could not change human nature, and that egalitarian societies were prone to over-population[citation needed], Malthus wrote in dramatic terms: "epidemics, pestilence and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow, levels the population with the food of the world".[8]
Malthus placed the longer-term stability of the economy above short-term expediency. He criticised the Poor Laws,[9] and (alone among important contemporary economists) supported the Corn Laws, which introduced a system of taxes on British imports of wheat. He thought these measures would encourage domestic production, and so promote long-term benefit.[10]
Malthus became hugely influential, and controversial, in economic, political, social and scientific thought. Many of those whom subsequent centuries sometimes term "evolutionary biologists" also read him,[11] notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, for each of whom Malthusianism became an intellectual stepping-stone to the idea of natural selection.[12][13] Malthus remains a writer of great significance, and debate continues as to whether his direst expectations will come about.