Darwin, Malthus, Süssmilch, and Euler: The ultimate origin of the motivation for the theory of natural selection

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Mathematics

Publication Date

8-15-2013

Abstract

It is fairly well known that Darwin was inspired to formulate his theory of natural selection by reading Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population. In fact, by reading Darwin’s notebooks, we can even locate one particular sentence which started Darwin thinking about population and selection. What has not been done before is to explain exactly where this sentence – essentially Malthus’s ideas about geometric population growth – came from. In this essay we show that eighteenth century mathematician Leonhard Euler is responsible for this sentence, and in fact forms the beginning of the logical chain which leads to the creation of the theory of natural selection. We shall examine the fascinating path taken by a mathematical calculation, the many different lenses through which it was viewed, and the path through which it eventually influenced Darwin.

Comments

This article was originally published in Journal of the History of Biology. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download through ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

Journal of the History of Biology

Copyright

Copyright © 2013 Springer

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