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U. S. Population in 1950: 148,678,000
Problem of Population,
Biologically Speaking,
No Cause for Pessimism
THE BIOLOGY O F POPULATION
G R O W T H . By Raymond Pearl. New
York : Alfred A. Knopf. $3-5°-
Reviewed by G. E L L I S P O R T E R
N T H I S volume Dr. Pearl has accom-
I plished something almost unique in
the literature of commentaries on
papulation problems. He has managed to
be both scientific and statistical without
being overwhelmed by either his science or
bis statistics. He has managed to formu-
late his findings into a law without falling
into gloom and pessimism or calling upon
humanity to view-with-alarm and attempt
wiggling from the clutches of that law.
His accomplishment is unquestionably due
largely to his manner of approach. It is
through biology—with a highly competent
mathematical checkup. Biology mirrors the
adaptivity of life. Life lias a way of meet-
ing all its emergencies. When it ceases to
do so it simply vanishes—and then nothing
matters.
6
Through mathematics it is possible to
separate factors of importance from those
of no importance. It is also possible to
state degrees of importance. Most of the
< alamity-janes of population growth have
been neither competent biologists nor more
than third-rate mathematicians. They have
been able neither to view life as a whole
nor to give its various factors their due
weight. Dr. Pearl's special mental equip-
ment and training enables him to do both.
And his mental balance makes him humble
before his conclusions.
In this book Dr. Pearl seeks to state a
law of biological growth which will in-
clude the growth of human populations.
Can it be that groups of people grow like
a vine, like a pumpkin, like a rat, like a
group of insects? These other things have
an upper limit in size. The pumpkin and
the rat stop growing at a certain point.
N*o amount of food would make them as
big as a mountain. No known external to bring out an English edition of "The
stimuli could make a rat grow to the size True Stevenson: a Study in, Liar
of a horse. Stimuli which are known, if
applied to the limit, bring not larger life
but the inevitable organic breakup, which
is death.
And not only is there an upper limit;
there is also a law of approach toward
that limit. At first it is slow ; then comes
a period of rapid increase; this is followed
by a tapering off toward the top. The law
can be graphically demonstrated by a con-
tuiuous mathematical curve, shaped like a
wire S which has been stretched sidewise.
Tt is comparatively easy to plot the curve
for a rat and a pumpkin. Dr. Pearl has
plotted it for an insect population confined
and controlled in a milk-bottle universe. If
* a similar curve cannot be traced to repre-
sent the growth of a human population the
reason is, first, because complete statistics
arc lacking in most cases, and, second, be-
cause the factors governing humanity are
too complex, too varied, too little known
from a scientific point of view.
lint if even a part of the mathematical
curve be known, the rest can be calculated
and plotted. If conditions remain essen-
tially stable, Dr. Pearl believes, it is pos-
sible to calculate human populations beyond
the range of known statistics, both back into
the past and forward into the future. Dur-
ing this cycle of 'essential stability, popu-
lation growth follows a mathematical law.
Needless to say, there is no human
group for which statistics are available
through a complete cycle; that is, from the
slow early growth, through the stage of
rapid increase, to the tapering off, just be-
fore the upper limit is reached. But the
native population of Algeria comes nearer
than any other known group and Dr. Pearl
gives a detailed analysis of its growth,
showing that his law, in its essentials, holds.
Population has increased in his Algerian
"universe" according to the law that pre-
vails in his milk-bottle "universes" of fruit
flies in his laboratory at Johns Hopkins.
Assuming that this law holds for all
populations and that their essential sta-
bility will not be upset during the next few
yean (Dr. Pearl warns us that we cannot
-j
•afely take in more than ten or twenty),
we are abk to make certain predictions of
practical utility. The* population of the
United States in 1050 will not be much
w o r e - o r lets dan 148,678,000; that of
o> Germany ion,ooovrjoo; that of France be-
tween 4o,8j6\ooo and 4« j86,ooa
The point b that most commentators on
population have taken for granted that it
will increase in die future just as rapidly
as if has increased in the past; that the
population of a given country, having
doubled, say, every so many years, will
continue to double every to many years m
the future; fiat the population of die world,
having increased thus and so in the past,
will continue to increase at the same rate
hi t'w future. Dr Pearl has proved thai
r*
EVENING POST LITERARY
populations simply do not act in this man-
ner.
A second point that differentiates him
from other commentators is the obsession of
the latter with the problem of food. Most
of them have predicted that the time will
come when the world will not produce
enough food to support all its people and
have placed the starvation point somewhere
in the appreciable future, such as the year
.2000. Not only does Dr. Pearl refuse to
countenance their mathematical calculations ;
he believes in the adaptability of human life
to conditions which may arise. He does
not believe that the human population will
ever reach the misery point; that, in fine,
it will simply stop increasing-long before
that gloomy stage is attained.
One of Dr. Pearl's comments in this con-
nection is worth quoting as an example of
the manner in which his own humanism and
individuality inform and flavor the whole
book. This is the way he puts it:
I think the thing which first made me
dubious about this inevitable misery
doctrine was its seemingly compelling
logic. It was so easy to prove logically
that it must be so that I began to be
suspicious tliat in fact it probably was
not so at all. Long experience with
experimental work has taught me that
a somewhat rough and ready, but on
the whole dependable, rule is that any
natural phenomenon which, in advance
of observation of the event, can be
proved by purely logical processes to
be necessarily so, almost invariably
turns out upon realty competent and
penetrating trial or observation to be in
fact not so at all, but quite* otherwise.
This curious phenomenon is, of course,
not the fault of logical processes of
thought, but merely an expression of
human fallibility in the matter of pre
mises.
The implications and applications of this
\ iewpoint go far toward putting Dr Pearl's
scientific work in a class by itself.
"The Lost Adventure" will be the title of
Walter Gilkyson's next novel. He is writing
it in Valencia, Spain. "Oil," Mr. Gilky-
son's first novel, was published by Scrib-
ner's.
Jonathan Cape of I»ndon intends shortly
Clarification,
i
meat ion,
by George S. Hellman (l.i
•, Brown),
Dorrance & Co. report tha the first edi-
tion of Dr. Clarence Edward Macartney's
"Lincoln and His Generals" was exhausted
six weeks after publication and a second
impression has just left the press.
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7
r—•"•
John Weaver Makes New
Contact With Life in
Latest Book of Verse
iugs. But Weaver, more painfully con-
scious of those qualities in people than of
anything else, waived the inanimate phase
and, with his first book, went straight at
humanity. The four stanzas quoted bring
in. belated and incidental, the consciousness
of things, which, from the beginning, has
seemed unimportant to him beside his con-
sciousness of people.
The group of people assembled here is as
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ixu\j0HP similar as what you hear on any
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awfully good one, and there is something
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ness and arc lights which seems to have all
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streets and people walking—
JOHN V. A. W E A V E R
The pore things, always hoofm it along.
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M O R E IN AMERICAN. By John V. A. have me," when he dies, and then tells how
Weaver. New York: Alfred A. Knopf the ashes should be divided into four parts
$1.50. and diversely disposed :
Rev iewed by 7 he second ashes, take 'em down to the
LOUISE TOWNSEND NICHOLL
ocean;
And when the waves come pihn' up the
N T H E midst of Johnny Weaver's
I usual "In American" poems ki this
latest book, is a different poem, the
beach.
Scatter 'em where the green starts to get
foamy.
prelude to "Heat," which is himself speak-
They used to sing me songs about havin'
ing instead of some one else:
nerve,
The emfiiy house yawns gloomily
And never getim' tired, or givin in
Up at the empty, cloudless sky; Let 'em run, and take me with 'em
The scorching .August sun-rays beat
On a dull wilderness of heat.
The pump is , rumbltng, red with rust,
The door is silver<chite with dust.
A'o hay-ruks, jogging homeward, pass,
A chipmunk shuttles through the grass
The burdock and the ragweed keep
Corners where roses used to sleep.
The crazy windows leer and stare
At ragged trees that once were fair
And still, beneath that empty sky
It stands in changeless dignity.
Few things I know are quite as grave
As any house—or quite as brave.
This feeling for inanimate things—their
SMUGGLING D A Y S
wistfulness and courage—usually precedes
in poets an analogous feeling' for human be
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Thomas M. Tryniski
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