ABSTRACT
Evolution belongs to no discipline in particular. On the contrary, evolutionary theory arose through a complex dialectic among the physical, social and life sciences, over a period when the current academic disciplinary matrix had not yet been crystallized. A well-known example of this dialectic is the influence of Thomas Malthus on Charles Darwin. In An Essay on the Principles of Population (1798), Malthus had argued that human populations tend to grow exponentially and are therefore naturally subject to check by famine and poverty. Darwin generalizes this principle in positing a ‘struggle for existence’ in which all living things are engaged. Darwin describes his debt to Malthus as follows:
Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of a distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some species may be now increasing, more or less rapidly, in numbers, all cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.1
