User:Gtn001/The struggle for existence

In the most basic form, the struggle for existence refers to the constant competition between organisms to live. Originating in the late 1700s, the phrase “struggle for existence” first came to use in Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus’s use of the struggle for existence came through his study of economics and people, not nature. Malthus knew that with limited resources on earth, there would be competition among people to exist and survive.

In addition to Malthus, Charles Darwin famously used the phrase “struggle for existence” in his book On the Origin of Species; the third chapter of this book is entitled “Struggle for Existence.” However, without the thoughts of Malthus, Darwin’s theory would not look as it does in On the Origin of Species. With Malthus’s idea of the struggle for existence, Darwin was able to change his view of adaption. From Malthus, Darwin claims that the struggle for existence idea allowed him to see that favorable variations would be preserved and unfavorable conditions would not leading to new species. In support, Darwin, around 1855, makes note that the struggle for existence helps produce diversification – leading to Darwin’s principle of divergence.

Similar to Darwin, Alfred Wallace uses the phrase struggle for existence when discussing the issue of slavery in 1853. With influence of Malthus, Wallace comes to a similar conclusion of the idea of the struggle for existence and the effects it has on the overall population by the year 1855 Wallace combines the idea of the struggle for existence with variation to make a reasonable argument for the “survival of the fittest” idea that was developing in this time period.

While the idea of the struggle for existence was developing in the western world at this time period, it is important to note the global interpretation of the struggle for existence, especially in Russia. In Russia, the idea of “mutual aid” was used to explain evolution rather than the struggle for existence. In the present day, claims have attempted to be made that over geological time macroevolution does not occur as a result of many short-term results. This attempts to show how the struggle for existence is not as important in the macroevolutionary scale.

References to be used in the Creation of this Page

 * Bennett, K. D. Evolution and Ecology: The Pace of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
 * Cooper, Gregory John. The Science of the Struggle for Existence: On the Foundations of Ecology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
 * Irvine, William. Apes, angels, and Victorians; the Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1955.
 * McKinney, H. Lewis. Wallace and Natural Selection. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.
 * Ospovat, Dov. The Development of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Selection, 1838-1859. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
 * Paradis, James G. T.H. Huxley: man's place in nature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
 * Petersen, William. Malthus. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979.
 * Smith, Charles H., and George Beccaloni. Natural Selection and Beyond: The Intellectual Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
 * Todes, Daniel Philip. Darwin without Malthus the struggle for existence in Russian evolutionary thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.