We all know that Charles Darwin is the father of Evolution. But, until I read this story in the Economist, I did not realize the effect that an economist had on him. It seems Darwin was reading the works of Thomas Maltus' "And Essay on the Principle of Population", which promotes the idea that humans will not be able to produce enough food in the future, because population was, in the late 1700s, growing much faster than food production. Therefore, people would have to compete for food, with the fittest surviving. This stimulated Darwin towards his theory of natural selection. This is why everyone should study Economics.
I guess if you are a creationist, you can use this as proof that evolution is poppycock, since Malthus' predictions turned out to be amazingly wrong. He seemed to have underestimated man's ability to adapt.
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