Robert Malthus Research Articles

T. Robert Malthus's Comparative Political Economy of Prudential Restraint

Abstract Examination of the second and subsequent editions of T. Robert Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population shows that the author created a more expansive examination of his political economy of population than that of the simple model in the Essay's first edition. In subsequent editions, the simple, ecological model gives way to a sophisticated general model of a commercial society with property rights, the rule of law, marriage laws similar to those of the British Christian tradition, and expanded markets. The result was not the “dismal” prognostication that Malthus is often identified with. Rather, he was reasonably optimistic that steady growth in per capita income could be accomplished along with a rising population. Biology could never be conquered, but within the right institutional context, reason might interrupt its career.

Robert Malthus, Thomas. 1836, “Introduction”, Principles of Political Economy, 2nd ed. London: W. Pickering (the first edition was published in 1820).

Article Robert Malthus, Thomas. 1836, “Introduction”, Principles of Political Economy, 2nd ed. London: W. Pickering (the first edition was published in 1820). was published on June 1, 2021 in the journal Man and the Economy (volume 8, issue 1).

Relevansi Teori Scarcity Robert Malthus Dalam Perspektif Ekonomi Syariah

Purpose-The purpose of this study is to examine the problem of scarcity related to the theory proposed by Robert Malthus and its relevance today. As well as how Islam views the nature of scarcity. 
 Methods- This research is classified as library research, where the collection of library materials that are relevant to the research topic is the main strength of this research. In addition, this research can be categorized in the study of character studies, namely a systematic and critical study of Robert Malthus's economic thinking related to the theory of scarcity. 
 Findings- In Islamic economics, if we return to the problem of food scarcity that Malthus argues is caused by the explosion of the population that is not illuminated with the amount of food in the world, then in essence, Allah SWT has bestowed nature and its contents to meet human needs. Every human being already has a part of their respective benefits, so there can be no shortage in terms of food-related to the increase in population that occurs. 
 Implications- Ideally, Malthus's theory reminds us that population growth must still pay attention to environmental sustainability, meaning that it must be adjusted to the carrying capacity and environmental capacity.

The paradox of Vito Volterra’s predator-prey model

This article is dedicated to the late Giorgio Israel. R{\'e}sum{\'e}. The aim of this article is to propose on the one hand a brief history of modeling starting from the works of Fibonacci, Robert Malthus, Pierre Francis Verhulst and then Vito Volterra and, on the other hand, to present the main hypotheses of the very famous but very little known predator-prey model elaborated in the 1920s by Volterra in order to solve a problem posed by his son-in-law, Umberto D'Ancona. It is thus shown that, contrary to a widely-held notion, Volterra's model is realistic and his seminal work laid the groundwork for modern population dynamics and mathematical ecology, including seasonality, migration, pollution and more. 1. A short history of modeling 1.1. The Malthusian model. If the rst scientic view of population growth seems to be that of Leonardo Fibonacci [2], also called Leonardo of Pisa, whose famous sequence of numbers was presented in his Liber abaci (1202) as a solution to a population growth problem, the modern foundations of population dynamics clearly date from Thomas Robert Malthus [20]. Considering an ideal population consisting of a single homogeneous animal species, that is, neglecting the variations in age, size and any periodicity for birth or mortality, and which lives alone in an invariable environment or coexists with other species without any direct or indirect inuence, he founded in 1798, with his celebrated claim Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, the paradigm of exponential growth. This consists in assuming that the increase of the number N (t) of individuals of this population, during a short interval of time, is proportional to N (t). This translates to the following dierential equation : (1) dN (t) dt = $\epsilon$N (t) where $\epsilon$ is a constant factor of proportionality that represents the growth coe-cient or growth rate. By integrating (1) we obtain the law of exponential growth or law of Malthusian growth (see Fig. 1). This law, which does not take into account the limits imposed by the environment on growth and which is in disagreement with the actual facts, had a profound inuence on Charles Darwin's work on natural selection. Indeed, Darwin [1] founded the idea of survival of the ttest on the 1. According to Frontier and Pichod-Viale [3] the correct terminology should be population kinetics, since the interaction between species cannot be represented by forces. 2. A population is dened as the set of individuals of the same species living on the same territory and able to reproduce among themselves.

The end of plenty: the race to feed a crowded world

When the demographer Robert Malthus (1766-1834) famously outlined the brutal relationship between food and population, he never imagined the success of modern scientific agriculture. In the mid-twentieth century, an unprecedented agricultural advancement known as the Green Revolution brought hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, and improved irrigation that drove the greatest population boom in history-but left ecological devastation in its wake. In The End of Plenty, award-winning environmental journalist Joel K. Bourne Jr. puts our race to feed the world in dramatic perspective. With a skyrocketing world population and tightening global grain supplies spurring riots and revolutions, humanity must produce as much food in the next four decades as it has since the beginning of civilization to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe. Yet climate change could render half our farmland useless by century's end. Writing with an agronomist's eye for practical solutions and a journalist's keen sense of character, detail, and the natural world, Bourne takes readers from his family farm to international agricultural hotspots to introduce the new generation of farmers and scientists engaged in the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. He discovers young, corporate cowboys trying to revive Ukraine as Europe's breadbasket, a Canadian aquaculturist channeling ancient Chinese traditions, the visionary behind the world's largest organic sugar-cane plantation, and many other extraordinary individuals struggling to increase food supplies-quickly and sustainably-as droughts, floods, and heat waves hammer crops around the globe. Part history, part reportage and advocacy, The End of Plenty is a panoramic account of the future of food, and a clarion call for anyone concerned about our planet and its people.

Book Review: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Capital in the Twenty-First Century. By Thomas Piketty. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. 696 pp. $39.95 (cloth).In an earlier time, Anglicans such as Robert Malthus, R. H. Tawney, William Temple, and Denys Munby publicly debated the states proper involvement in economic life. In the early 1940s Temple and J. M. Keynes exchanged letters: Temple would later lead the 1941 Malvern Conference, which would become the moral foundation for the British Welfare State, and he would spread its message with the book Christianity and Social Order. More recently, Anglican theologians such as Kathryn Tanner, and economists such as A. M. C. Waterman, Deirdre McCloskey, and Paul Heyne, have attended to issues of moral economy.Once in a generation, however, a book changes the scope of debate. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century places this question: What are the roots of inequality at the center of our conversation? His answer: Wealth accumulates when there is low economic growth but high returns from capital. The market, left alone, naturally leads to divergence of income; capital flows upward, accumulating toward the top, and eventually entrepreneurs become rentiers. He demonstrates why inheritance predominates over saving and how wealth from the past grows more than wealth from work. Although not a necessary law, it is consistent throughout history with one exception-the mid-twentieth century until 1980, when there were powerful forces for convergence.Piketty explains how the innovation of the middle class, an exception to market forces, transformed Europe, also observing that republican virtues and capital returns are not necessary partners. He dissects the difference between merit and luck, effort and compensation. He shows that inequality in the U.S. arose from the salaries of supermanagers-who, once marginal tax rates decreased, began to set their own salary.Piketty argues that widespread divergence can be powerful enough to threaten the basis for democratic governments and the institutions of justice that undergird them. When there is greater inequality, the temptations of nationalism and identity politics grow stronger (p. 539), and commerce is less stable.Piketty suggests a global tax of 1-2 percent on capital (rather than income) upon the superrich. This would force them to use their wealth more efficiently, selling assets to more dynamic investors, increasing growth (p. 526). This is contingent upon greater transparency in the banking system, which would reveal how the wealthy accumulate their money (p. …

Malthus, the Slave Trade, and the Civilizing Effect of the Preventive Checks

Robert Malthus was, by his own admission, opposed to slavery and the slave trade. Nevertheless, English proponents of the slave trade, and southern slave owners in the southern United States, appealed to his population principle in their defense. The disconnect between these two statements is a classic study of how ideas get lost in their cultural appropriation. My interest in this paper emerges not from the disjunction between different interpretations of Malthus’ population principle, but from his off-the-cuff response to the discovery that defenders of the slave trade in England were using his argument to bolster their case. In that response, Malthus constructs an argument about the interplay between the population principle and the preventive checks that reinforces the interpretation of the role of “the degree of civilization” in the subsequent editions of his Essay that I offered in a recent paper.The argument is twofold. First, the paper revisits the argument that the expansion of the realm of exchange among individuals in a society, supported by institutional development of individual property rights and the rule of law, would effectively prevent the inexorable effects of the population principle by expanded operation of prudential and moral decisions regarding the timing of marriage. In societies with a high degree of civilization, population growth was regulated solely by the prevailing power of prudence and moral restraint. Slavery not only violated the individual rights of the slave, but also created a set of social relations that stymied the effective operation of prudential and moral restraint. Secondly, in the examination of Malthus’ response to the use of his population principle by advocates of slavery, we see Malthus argue that the continuation of barbarous (i.e., uncivilized and unrestrained) practices among societies that claimed to be “high” civilizations would only continue the participation of members of other societies in those same barbarous practices. Thus, slavery was also a form of institutional failure, which prevented the advancement of any society that participated in it toward a higher degree of civilization.

Malthus with Institutions: A Comparative Analysis of Prudential Restraint

T. Robert Malthus is usually remembered for the “gloomy presentiments” of the population principle articulated in the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population. Less attention is given to the subsequent editions of the Essay, in which Malthus refined the principle, and evaluated it against evidence from around the world. The principle’s refinement allowed Malthus to sharpen the distinction between preventive checks that depended upon individual prudential foresight and those that requiring moral restraint. Prudential foresight allowed individuals to evaluate fertility decisions because of the constraints the individual faced. Few of us are graced with moral restraint, but societies provide institutional constraints that create a cost structure which our prudential reason uses to make what were, in Malthus’ time, decisions regarding the timing of marriage.The refined population principle provided the basis for an empirical claim that could be tested. Where a civilization provided institutional incentives to delay marriage, prudential reasoning would become the primary means of checking population growth. Where the incentives to delay marriage were weak or did not exist, the civilization’ population would be checked primarily by the positive checks of disease, starvation, war, and disaster. Subsequent editions of the Essay provide the empirical check of this claim. In these editions, Malthus provided a comparative analysis of the variety of institutional frameworks within which human fertility decisions are made, and examines their effectiveness in delaying marriage, and hence, encouraging the operation of the prudential v. positive checks.His comparative analysis provided a scale along which civilizations could be placed. Societies with few institutions featured early marriage, and, his empirical investigations showed, the operational primacy of the positive checks. Some societies, like Malthus’ own Great Britain, had developed some institutions which provided incentives to delay marriage, but had other institutional features which encouraged early marriage. Hence, while these societies were advancing because of the operation of the prudential checks, their populations were sometimes subject to the operation of the positive checks. The question remained whether any society could in the future achieve sufficiently advanced institutional features to control population almost exclusively via the prudential checks.

After Adam Smith: a century of transformation in politics and political economy

Few issues are more central to our present predicaments than the relationship between economics and politics. After Adam Smith looks at how politics and political economy were articulated and altered in the century following the publication of Smith's Wealth of Nations. It considers how grand ideas about the connections between individual liberty, free markets, and social and economic justice sometimes attributed to Smith are as much the product of gradual modifications and changes wrought by later writers.Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and other liberals, radicals, and reformers had a hand in conceptual transformations that culminated in the advent of neoclassical economics. The population problem, the declining importance of agriculture, the consequences of industrialization, the structural characteristics of civil society, the role of the state in economic affairs, and the possible limits to progress were questions that underwent significant readjustments as the thinkers who confronted them in different times and circumstances reworked the framework of ideas advanced by Smith. By exploring how questions Smith had originally grappled with were recast as the economy and the principles of political economy altered during the nineteenth century, this book demonstrates that we are as much the heirs of later images of Smith as we are of Smith himself.Many writers helped shape different ways of thinking about economics and politics after Adam Smith. By ignoring their interventions we risk misreading our past--and also misusing it--when thinking about the choices at the interface of economics and politics that confront us today.

Elwell, Macrosociology - The Study Of Sociocultural Systems

Frank Elwell's Macrosociology is a rare find because it is well written and accessible, yet treats its subject, sociological theory, in the proper manner. Elwell's choice of theoretical traditions covers the "big three" classical thinkers-Marx, Durkheim, Weber-but the readers might find themselves pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Robert Malthus. The book is broken down into sections based on these four essential theorists, with additional chapters in each section covering thinkers whose ideas build upon or complement the classics. For instance, to Weber's treatment of rationalization, Elwell adds George Ritzer's recent and popular notion of "McDonalidization"-an idea that brings familiarity to a concept otherwise intimidating to many students.

Bushfire and the Malthusian guillotine: survival of small mammals in a refuge in Nadgee Nature Reserve, south-eastern New South Wales

Following an intense bushfire in December 1972, small mammals were sampled from November 1973 to June 1976 on a few hectares of unburnt, grassy river flat in the Nadgee Nature Reserve, New South Wales. Hindsight shows the importance of these small unburnt patches as refuges for small mammals. A surprising proportion of wildlife survives a large bushfire, but the post-fire population is in extremis, confronted by famine and exposed to increased predation. All small-mammal species on a forest plot burnt in the ?72 fire disappeared. On the unburnt flat, five species were encountered and continued to survive. There was a common theme to all five populations in the refuge; incessant flux, many births and disappearances, virtually static overall population. The oft-cited ideas of T. Robert Malthus, although seen by some as old-fashioned and wrong when applied to human populations, lend power to our understanding of population events in the small refuge surviving the ?72 fire. The theme is clear: the populations of small mammals on the flat survived, but barely, as the small numbers in each year?s winter show, and it is only by the operation of the ?Malthusian Guillotine? that they are able to do so. The guillotine is an apt metaphor for the survival process; its operation is stark, but it is efficient, and it is mercifully brief. The conservation implications from this study are striking. The most important being the vital role played by refuges following an extensive and intense fire. In an era of global warming and increasing predictions of the likelihood of bushfires rising, such matters will loom even larger.

Rethinking the Politics of Family StudiesReading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life. By Arland Thornton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Rethinking the Politics of Family Studies<i>Reading History Sideways: The Fallacy and Enduring Impact of the Developmental Paradigm on Family Life</i>. By Arland Thornton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Long-Term Energy Solutions: The Truth Behind the Silent Lie

The article by Albert Bartlett causes me great concern. The suggestion that stopping population growth is necessary to address the problem of finite resources seems intellectually irresponsible. Bartlett cites the ideas of mathematician Robert Malthus as obvious truth, but dismisses economist Julian Simon as a “nonscientist,” even though Simon’s field of study is precisely concerned with the way humans manage scarce resources. Mathematicians and physicists may be very good at applying mathematical models to situations controlled by predictable forces, but they should show some deference to “nonscientists” who have more experience dealing with the intelligent actions of humans.Bartlett’s attitude toward human freedom and human life is most disturbing. While chastising physicists for not telling people the truth about the need for population control, Bartlett is careful not to spell out exactly what population control entails. How does he intend to prevent too many children from being born? Will he ask people to please have only as many children as he tells them? Undoubtedly, some force from outside families would need to control their growth. Most likely, the government would have to impose penalties on individuals who have more than the allotted number of children. The idea of such a restriction on our freedom should make good Americans sick to the stomach.Would Bartlett have the government throw the parents of “extra” children in jail? Should they pay a fine, so that the rich will pay money and the poor will pay Bartlett’s inhumane cost? Perhaps the US should follow the lead of nations like China, where women have been forced to have abortions. Or maybe it should leave the children alone but kill the parents.I suggest that consideration of the need for population control is more related to economics than to physics. In truth, however, it ranges even beyond that field: It calls into question the moral beauty of human life and the importance of human freedom. Let us keep this in mind as we ponder the wisdom of a vague notion of population control.© 2004 American Institute of Physics.

Malthus and The Demographic Systems of Modern Europe and Imperial China: A Critique of Lee and Feng

How manytimes do we not hear in academia that a new paradigm has emerged and for-mer certainties no longer hold sway? One of the editorial reviews of James Lee and WangFeng’s (2001) One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities,1700–2000 promises us that this book “presents evidence about historical and contempo-raryChinese population behaviour that overturns much of the received wisdom about thedifferences between China and the West first voiced byMalthus.” But I wonder if this is an-other instance in which what is described as “new” and “original” is reallya result of nothaving learned to appraise or understand the old.The essential thesis of this clearlywritten and well-organized book is that the “binarycontrast” Malthus drew between a “Western” demographic model characterized bylow fer-tilityand lowmortalityratesand aChinesemodeldominated byhigh fertilityand high mor-talityrates is not supported bythe available evidence on Chinese population behavior. ThisMalthusian interpretation, the authors contend, held dearlybya long line of historical de-mographers since Malthus’s time, has no basis in “Chinese realities” but is merelyanotherexpression of “the ethnocentric and teleologic traps so common to earlier social science”(146). Despite the authors’ keen grasp of “Chinese realities,” I think this assessment ofThomas Robert Malthus’s legacyis incorrect. The “binarycontrast” Lee and Feng attributeto Malthus is based on a loss of memoryof the historical and intellectual context to whichMalthus’s first essay ([1798] 1960) on population owes its origin.Reading Lee and Feng, one would think that Parson Malthus, the man whose theoryMarx called a “libel on the human race,” was a cheerful optimist firmlyconvinced that inmodern Western societies, reason had finallytriumphed over the unconscious exercise of

Comments and Discussion

Catching Up with the Leaders:The Irish Hare Patrick Honohan and Brendan Walsh For many decades Ireland's output per capita ranked about twenty-fourth among the world's industrial nations. Suddenly, in the mid-1990s Ireland started to move up, from twenty-second in 1993 to eighteenth in 1997 and an amazing ninth in 1999.1 The many facets of Irish success over these years, from a disproportionate representation in popular music to the largest current account surplus in the industrial world, caught the public imagination at home and abroad. This paper examines the startling turnaround in Irish economic performance that began in the mid-1980s. By comparison with Ireland's previous economic performance there is indeed a miracle to explain, but from a global perspective the question is surely why it took so long for Ireland to catch up with the rest of Europe. Although most attention has focused on aggregate output growth rates—real GDP growth averaged 10 percent a year over the period 1995-2000—we will show that the salient feature of Ireland's catch-up has been an increase in the proportion of the population at work. This is partly a function of demographic trends and partly of a remarkable reduction in the rate of unemployment, neither of which can be repeated. When the data are correctly interpreted, there has been no productivity miracle, as some have claimed, and Ireland's ranking in terms of average living [End Page 1] standards has not been quite as good as implied by the conventional statistics quoted above—although the performance of the labor market during the 1990s was marvelous. Dissecting the sources of output growth and understanding the transformation of the labor market are the two central tasks of this paper. In addition, we describe how inappropriate fiscal and perhaps monetary policies held Ireland back in earlier years, with the result that convergence, when it occurred, was telescoped into a short period.2 Catching up, and doing so rapidly, requires a favorable institutional, policy, and external environment. Several individual institutions and policy entities in Ireland are each quietly confident that it is the unique source of the turnaround. As our story unfolds, it will become evident that the credit must be widely shared, and that a much improved external environment also played its part. Background In a letter to David Ricardo in 1817, Robert Malthus said, "a population greatly in excess of the demand for labour" was "the predominant evil of Ireland."3 This was a generation before the famines of the 1840s triggered large-scale emigration and a decline in the national population that continued until the 1960s. Irish adjustment during the nineteenth century has been cited as a good example of how globalization fostered convergence of living standards. The island was transformed from a poverty-stricken, peasant economy that had served as a source of cheap labor for booming cities in Britain and North America to an economy that, at the start of the twentieth century, boasted wages—in some sectors of the urban economy at least—close to those prevailing across the Irish Sea.4 But the rural population and unskilled urban workers, who predominated, continued to lag behind, and in the course of the twentieth century [End Page 2] Ireland seemed—like Aesop's hare—to take a breather. Feeding Britain through two world wars provided adequate export revenue for what was still primarily an agrarian economy, especially that part of the island that became the Republic of Ireland, which is the subject of this paper. Economic historians characterize the third quarter of the twentieth century as the "Golden Age" of European growth.5 Most Western European economies, having recovered from wartime damage by around 1950, continued to grow more rapidly than before or since until the first oil shock in 1973. Ireland did not share in this happy experience—indeed, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of per capita output growth over those years. In the 1950s Ireland stumbled badly, with a renewed surge of emigration, and it continued to exhibit the symptoms of a labor-surplus economy, not so much in the rate of unemployment as in emigration...

Catching Up with the Leaders: The Irish Hare

FOR MANY DECADES Ireland's output per capita ranked about twenty-fourth among world's industrial nations. Suddenly, in mid-1990s Ireland started to move up, from twenty-second in 1993 to eighteenth in 1997 and an amazing ninth in 1999. (1) The many facets of Irish success over these years, from disproportionate representation in popular music to largest current account surplus in industrial world, caught public imagination at home and abroad. This paper examines startling turnaround in Irish economic performance that began in mid-1980s. By comparison with Ireland's previous economic performance there is indeed miracle to explain, but from global perspective question is surely why it took so long for Ireland to catch up with rest of Europe. Although most attention has focused on aggregate output growth Rates--real GDP growth averaged 10 percent year over period 1995-2000--we will show that salient feature of Ireland's catch-up has been an increase in proportion of population at work. This is partly function of demographic trends and partly of remarkable reduction in rate of unemployment, neither of which can be repeated. When data are correctly interpreted, there has been no productivity miracle, as some have claimed, and Ireland's ranking in terms of average living standards has not been quite as good as implied by conventional statistics quoted above--although performance of labor market during 1990s was marvelous. Dissecting sources of output growth and understanding transformation of labor market are two central tasks of this paper. In addition, we describe how inappropriate fiscal and perhaps monetary policies held Ireland back in earlier years, with result that convergence, when it occurred, was telescoped into short period. (2) Catching up, and doing so rapidly, requires favorable institutional, policy, and external environment. Several individual institutions and policy entities in Ireland are each quietly confident that it is unique source of turnaround. As our story unfolds, it will become evident that credit must be widely shared, and that much improved external environment also played its part. Background In letter to David Ricardo in 1817, Robert Malthus said, a population greatly in excess of demand for labour was the predominant evil of Ireland. (3) This was generation before famines of 1840s triggered large-scale emigration and decline in national population that continued until 1960s. Irish adjustment during nineteenth century has been cited as good example of how globalization fostered convergence of living standards. The island was transformed from poverty-stricken, peasant economy that had served as source of cheap labor for booming cities in Britain and North America to an economy that, at start of twentieth century, boasted wages--in some sectors of urban economy at least--close to those prevailing across Irish Sea. (4) But rural population and unskilled urban workers, who predominated, continued to lag behind, and in course of twentieth century Ireland seemed--like Aesop's hare--to take breather. Feeding Britain through two world wars provided adequate export revenue for what was still primarily an agrarian economy, especially that part of island that became Republic of Ireland, which is subject of this paper. Economic historians characterize third quarter of twentieth century as Golden Age of European growth. (5) Most Western European economies, having recovered from wartime damage by around 1950, continued to grow more rapidly than before or since until first oil shock in 1973. Ireland did not share in this happy experience--indeed, only United Kingdom had lower rate of per capita output growth over those years. …

Limiting Reagent and Kinetics: Social Implications and Malthus' Prediction

Robert Malthus predicted in the early 1800s that man would outstrip his food supply. The amount of carbon on earth is the ultimate for the number of people the earth can have and in the sense that carbon is our food, Malthus was right. However, the land area of the earth is a limiting reagent that will limit our population before carbon does. These concepts are discussed in the context of reagents and chemical kinetics to show that if the rate of increase of population remains at what it is now, we have less than a thousand years to solve the problem.

Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1750-1834

1. After Adam Smith: prologue Part I. Adam Smith's Science of the Legislator: 2. An excessive solicitude for posthumous reputation 3. The secret concatenation 4. The wisdom of Solomon Part II. Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Factious Citizens: 5. Contested affinities 6. The loss of regal government 7. Burke's creed: politics, chivalry, and superstition 8. The labouring poor Part III. Robert Malthus as Political Moralist: 9. Imminence and immediacy: initial bearings 10. New and extraordinary lights 11. Rather a matter of feeling than argument 12. A manufacturing animal: things not persons? 13. The bountiful gift of providence 14. Last things and other legacies Part IV: 15. Epilogue.

Hydrobiologia, Malthus, exemptionalism and the risk/uncertainty paradox

Hydrobiologia, with which I have had a long association, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 1998. This year is also the 200th anniversary of Robert Malthus' still hotly debated publication on overpopulation. Readers of Hydrobiologia know well the impacts on the water resource of a growing human population, increased per capita affluence, major industrialization over much of the planet, and the explosion of new technologies that have effects on the water resource. Those concerned with the integrity and condition of water resources should be deeply involved in the debate on the exemption of human society from the biophysical laws of nature and its dependence on the life support services of ecosystems. Arguably, water resources will be the main battleground on which this debate is resolved. This discussion is a preliminary exploration of the primary issues. Even though the word water does not appear frequently in this paper, the connection to our profession and the future of the hydrobiological ecosystem and Hydrobiologia is present in every page.

Experimental Agriculture and the Malthusian Challenge

Nearly two hundred years have elapsed since Robert Malthus published (anonymously) his first ‘Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society …’. Population, he argued, will always grow faster than the means to sustain it, unless constraints to its growth arise naturally or are imposed artificially.