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Class Readings and Plans for Thursday, October 22
Demography and Historical Ecology, Part I
Readings
For today, everyone will read the same materials.
Malthus, Thomas, (1798) Book 1, Chapters 1 and 2 of Essay on the Principle of Population.
Penn, D. J. (2003). The evolutionary roots of our environmental problems: Toward a Darwinian ecology. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 78(3), 275-301.
[optional]Livi-Bassi, Massimo (2001, third edition), Chapters 1 and 3 of
A Concise History of World Population, Oxford: Blackwell (this is a good reference for the basic facts of world population history, but it's long, and much of the same material will be covered in the in-class presentation).
Class Plan
By 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 22, please post a comment on your initial reaction to Malthus's and Penn's arguments.
In class we will do the following activities:
- First we will have a mini-lecture and general questions about Malthus and about demographic history.
- Then we will have general discussion of the following questions
- Malthus saw population growth as an inevitable path to misery, murder, warfare. Do you agree? What options do we have?
- Do you agree with Penn that resolving environmental problems we face will require addressing the underlying evolutionary incentives that lead people to make potentially damaging choices?
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