Historical Influences on Darwin
1. After researching all five individuals on the list given, I would say that Thomas Malthus has had the most influence over Darwin's development of his theory of evolution.
2. In 1798, Thomas Malthus published essay on the Principle of Population and its affects on the future improvement of society. Malthus had doubts about whether a nation, or a group of people in general, could ever reach a point where laws and rules would no longer be required, to run a society properly. Malthus argued that the growth of population would always exceed the rate the ability to feed itself. This meant that the human population would always be growing at an unstable rate and the ability to feed the population would get more difficult as the years went on.
3. One point that was directly affected by Malthus's work was when he talked about how individual people w never evolve, but the human population would. He talked about how individual traits of human beings and how they cannot change. It is a generational type of change and it happens between generations. Malthus's theory explains how populations grow and evolve together and that is why individuals cannot evolve, because a population is a group of people and not just one individual.
4. In my opinion, Thomas Malthus was a big influence to the creation of Darwin's theory of evolution. Darwin disagreed with Malthus's idea of the evolution of populations and instead, believed that the population would level out with the production of materials.
5. The church had no affect with Darwin's ideas in any way. He was never hesitant to express his beliefs and still managed to publish his theory to the public, even with all the negative backlash that he received.
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While you do accurately describe parts of Malthus' work, they aren't the parts related to Darwin's theory. What were the basic mathematical principles that provided the logical foundation for Malthus' work? What led to the problem of overpopulation in humans? This is important to help your reader make the connection between Malthus' and Darwin's work. That was really Darwin's starting place.
For example: Malthus was an economist who was also very concerned about the problems related to overpopulation. He developed two basic Malthusian principles: He understood that (1) populations had the potential of growing exponentially and (2) resources tended to grow at a slower, arithmetic rate. He noticed that natural populations of animals never seemed to overpopulate their available resources. It was as if some natural force was limiting their population size. He then compared natural populations to human populations and recognized that humans seemed to be lacking this natural force (whatever it was) and as a result, humans seemed to outgrow their available resources. Malthus argued that unless humans self-regulated their reproduction (he was a huge proponent of birth control), other processes, such as famine, disease and war, would be the natural result, forcing us to cut our populations via mass death.
"One point that was directly affected by Malthus's work was when he talked about how individual people w never evolve, but the human population would."
It is very important to understand that Malthus was not only an economist, he was also a minister and morally opposed to the concept of evolution. He would never have directly guided the reasoning behind evolution and would be horrified to know that he was forever linked with Darwin due to his accidental influence on his theory.
So with that in mind, what bullet points apply to Malthus? The two Malthusian principles I listed above, that about the exponential growth patterns of populations and the arithmetic growth of resources.
You draw a conclusion here regarding whether or not Darwin could have developed his theory without Malthus. I am usually not inclined to argue that any individual was indispensable to the work of another, but in the case of Malthus, even Darwin seems to argue this in his own writings:
"... it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work".
Charles Darwin, from his autobiography. (1876)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html
At the time Darwin read Malthus' essay, Darwin had collected a mountain of specimens and data, but couldn't figure out how to put it all together into a cohesive theory. Malthus concept of resource competition was key.
"The church had no affect with Darwin's ideas in any way. "
Actually, since he delayed publishing for more than two decades, I suggest he was very concerned about the influence of the church. The question is, what were his concerns? What might have happened to him, socially or professionally? And was he only worried about himself or was he also worried about how his family might be impacted by publishing? Remember that his wife was very devout. How might she have been impacted if the church responded negatively to Darwin? Remember that scientists don't work in a vacuum. They can be influenced not just by academics but also by social, cultural and personal issues.
No source cited here.