MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT

Malthus, Thomas Robert: translation

(1766–1834)

English social theorist. Although belonging principally to the history of science, Malthus'sEssay on Populations(1798) was philosophically influential in undermining the Enlightenment belief in unlimited possibilities of human progress and perfection . The ‘principle of population’, or natural tendency of populations to expand geometrically, and therefore faster than resources (which are constrained by available area), seemed to promise instead a grim vista of inevitable epidemic and famine. The principle was, and remains, an uncomfortable argument against attempting to check poverty by providing food and other resources, since such a policy will only renew the same problems in subsequent, larger, generations.