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MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
Theory of population. History and essence of scientific discovery
Directory / The most important scientific discoveries For many centuries, each state has sought to maximize the growth of its population, taking various measures for this. Thus, the Greek state simply ordered citizens to marry and severely prosecuted those who violated their orders. The Roman emperors acted softer: they seduced with the advantages and privileges that they awarded family people, and frightened them with the prospect of various inconveniences associated with a single state. The state of the 1623th-25th centuries followed this last path, developing a complex system of rewards and punishments with the same goal - to increase the population. Examples of this kind are the Spanish decree of XNUMX and the famous edict of Louis XIV, where people who married before the age of XNUMX, as well as fathers of ten children, were given significant benefits in paying taxes and duties. And in the eighteenth century, states everywhere continued to follow the path of artificial encouragement of the population. Taking care of the population, the state lost sight of its well-being. The main representatives of this direction of state science in the XNUMXth century were Süssmilch, Justi and Sonnenfeltz. Sonnenfelz motivates this position in this way: “The larger the mass of the people, the stronger can be the resistance on which external security rests - this is the basic position of politics; the larger the mass of the people, whose assistance can be counted on, the less danger threatens from within - such is the basic position of the police (the art of management); the more people, the more needs, the more numerous the internal sources of subsistence in the country; the more workers, the better agriculture goes, the more material for exchange - this is the basic position of the science of trade; the more citizens, the more the state receives for its expenses, although for each taxed less - such is the basic position of financial science. This was the prevailing opinion. It cannot be said that even in the XNUMXth century it did not find any objections or amendments to itself. Already the physiocrats and encyclopedists, but most of all in Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, pointed to the dependence of population growth on an increase in the means of subsistence. The Italian Jamaria Ortes (1713-1790) wrote an essay whose very title draws attention: "Reflections on population in its relation to the national economy." In his opinion, the population is determined by the fertility of the soil. On the question of population growth, he expresses the opinion that growth takes place exponentially. Among animals there is a desire for such rapid reproduction, but nature delays it by "force", in humans the restraining principle is "reason" - gallop. Therefore, in certain cases, celibacy is as necessary as marriage. Here is clearly formulated part of the Malthusian doctrine, which will be discussed in this article. Indeed, in the literal sense, it was not Malthus who discovered the so-called law of population, nor did he own the first idea of geometric progression. However, before Malthus, the opinion prevailed, according to which there would be people, but there would be food for them. But the book of Malthus "On Population" appears, and the situation changes dramatically. That view, which until now was considered almost paradoxical and expressed by very few, becomes dominant; the opposite opinion, recently accepted, almost completely disappears from the scene. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was born in Surrey, near Dorking, on a small estate in the town of Rookery. At the age of ten, Robert was sent to the tutor Richard Graves, where he began to study Latin and good manners. Later, a fairly well-known person in the then English society, Gilbert Wakefield, became the new educator. He belonged to the number of those rebellious priests who refused to accept the "39 Articles", which formulated under Elizabeth the main dogmas of the English Church. From the hands of Wakefield, the young Malthus moved to the Jesuit college in Cambridge. Enrolling there in 1785, Malthus enthusiastically takes up his studies. His mathematical abilities were most clearly revealed in the college. After many years of intensive studies, mainly in the humanities and public affairs, in 1797 Malthus received a master's degree. In the same year he became an adjunct professor in the college, and then took the place of the priest near Albery. The beginning of his literary activity also belongs to this time. The first work of Malthus was a political treatise called "Crisis", which contained a sharp criticism of the actions of Pitt, who was then in power. However, on the advice of his father, this pamphlet remained in the author's portfolio. Here you can already find the beginnings of the main provisions of the Essay on Population. The first edition of "Experience...", which appeared in 1798 without the name of the author, was written for polemical purposes and without sufficient special preparation of the author, was full of rhetorical embellishments and at the same time needed factual justification. However, despite all the shortcomings, it made a splash when it appeared. This was mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, the book dealt with issues that were relevant at that time and, secondly, gave them a correct or incorrect, but, in any case, a decisive and original answer. And it was quite clear to Malthus himself that his thoughts needed proof and factual substantiation, so he diligently engaged in the closest study of the issue that he had to solve in his "Experience ..." at first without sufficient knowledge. But the position of the question of population at that time was such that Malthus had before him only the poorest literature and, most importantly, the most limited amount of accurate, verified facts. Statistics as a science did not yet exist. Malthus, when he undertook a detailed study of the question of population, had to collect facts himself, and generalize them, and lay the foundations for scientific statistical research, and give accurate answers to the acute questions of our time. He soon saw that a journey had to be made, since it was the only possible means of collecting the missing information and filling the existing gap with his own observations. Malthus publishes the second, revised and enlarged, edition of the Essay on Population. Both the external form of presentation and some of the main provisions of the doctrine itself have undergone processing. The main change in essence was that he no longer considers poverty and crime to be the only obstacles to an excessive increase in population, but adds to them moral abstinence or a conscious refusal to bear children. In accordance with this addition, the picture of the future drawn by Malthus with its inevitable evil of overpopulation must have lost much in its gloom. Unfortunately, such an important correction in the doctrine did not in the least affect the final conclusions of the author, but introduced some disharmony into the previously so harmonious structure of his system. “The subject of present experience,” says Malthus in the first chapter of his book, “is the study of a phenomenon closely connected with the nature of man, a phenomenon that has made itself known constantly and powerfully from the very beginning of human society. ... The phenomenon in question here is the constant desire of all living beings to multiply in greater numbers than that for which there are food supplies. This tendency is found throughout the organic world: plants and animals submit to it in the same way as man. But while the former multiply unconsciously and involuntarily, held back solely by the lack of space and food, man is guided by reason and stops in his reproduction by concern for the necessary food. When passions drown out the voice of reason, and instinct becomes stronger than foresight, the correspondence between food supplies and population is violated and the latter is subjected to the calamities of famine. don't have to watch. There are countries, however, where these obstacles are not so strong: in North America, for example, the necessary means of subsistence are greater, and the morals of the population are purer than in Europe, and here it has been observed that the population doubles in less than 25 years. Consequently, in the complete absence of any obstacles to reproduction, the doubling period can be even shorter. But food supplies are not so easily increased. The earth has its limits. When all fertile plots are already occupied and cultivated, an increase in the means of subsistence can be expected only from improved methods of cultivation and from technical improvements. These improvements, however, cannot be made with lasting success; on the contrary, while the population will continue to increase and increase, there will be some hitch in the increase in the means of subsistence. According to Malthus, the population is growing exponentially, while food is at best only arithmetic. From this he concludes that for the well-being of the human race, in order to maintain a balance between the population and the necessary means of subsistence, it is necessary that the natural reproduction of people always encounter certain obstacles and delays. Malthus divides the existing obstacles into two categories: preventive and destructive obstacles. The first stems from the ability of people to weigh their actions and control their instincts. Feeding keeps many from marrying too early. This kind of abstinence Malthus calls moral - if only it does not lead to debauchery. Malthus considers such a preventive barrier to be laudable corrections to the law of population, but, unfortunately, not so strong as to make destructive barriers superfluous. “Destructive obstacles,” he says, “are very diverse; these include all phenomena arising from vice or suffering and shortening the duration of human life. Under this heading can be brought all unhealthy occupations, hard work, the influence of a bad season, extreme poverty, bad food given to children, life in big cities, excesses of every kind; then generalized diseases and epidemics, wars, plague and famine follow in a string. As conclusions from the first two chapters of his "Experience ..." Malthus establishes the following three main provisions, which can be considered the cornerstones of his entire teaching: 1. Population is strictly limited by the means of subsistence. 2. Population always increases when means of subsistence increase, unless it is checked by some powerful counter cause. 3. All the obstacles that, by limiting the power of reproduction, keep the population at the level of the means of subsistence, come down, in the end, to moral abstinence, vice and misfortune. If we compare these theses with the main provisions of the doctrine that prevailed in the XNUMXth century, then we can immediately see the whole sharpness of the revolution made by Malthus in the position of the question of population. More people, and there will be means of subsistence, - they said before Malthus; more means of subsistence, and people will appear, - says Malthus - and almost all scientists of the XNUMXth century began to repeat the same after him. From such different theoretical positions follows a different attitude towards state policy: let the state encourage the population, they demanded in the XNUMXth century; all this kind of encouragement is useless and even harmful, Malthus will tell us. Thus, the question of population is withdrawn by Malthus from the sphere of state influence, from the sphere of politics, and for the first time becomes the object of strictly scientific research. Population growth ceases to be something more or less accidental, subject to all the vicissitudes of political life. From now on, it is recognized as a natural phenomenon and being in strict dependence on nature and material conditions. The investigation of causes takes the place of fruitless experiments on inevitable consequences. Science comes into its own, and in the book of Malthus one can already feel the spirit of the XNUMXth century ... It is not surprising that in the world of professional scientists and statesmen, the new bold doctrine first produced the impression of a dynamite explosion, and for the whole society it was a revelation on a subject that no one has yet spoken to the uninitiated in simple language and in a completely accessible form. Author: Samin D.K.
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