The Principle of the

Population
 A.“There is a tendency for the human
population (and that of any species) to
be as large as its environment will
allow.”
b. If there were no checks to
population size, that of the human (or
any) population would tend to increase
indefinitely.
An Essay on the Principle of Population
 The book An Essay on the Principle of Population was
first published anonymously in 1798, but the author was
soon identified as Thomas Robert Malthus. The book
warned of future difficulties, on an interpretation of
the population increasing in geometric progression (so
as to double every 25 years)while food production
increased in an arithmetic progression, which would
leave a difference resulting in the want of food and
famine, unless birth rates decreased.
Relationship between: Population
and food supply
- the population grows eventually
and the food supply grows arithmetically
and that a balance between the two
established through positive check and
preventive check.
Arithmetic rate means it rises at :
2,4,6,8,10 l,12,14……….

Geometric rate meaning it rises at:

2,4,8,16,32,64………….
Control Population
Preventive check
-preventive measures such as late marriage, self-control,
and simple living, help to balance the population growth and
food supply. These measures not only check the population
growth, but can also prevent the catastrophic effects of the
positive checks.

Positive check
-nature has its own ways of keeping a check
on the increasing population. It brings the
population level to the level of the available food
supply. The positive checks include famines,
earthquakes, floods, epidemics, wars, etc. Nature
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE PRINCIPLE

- is a principle that was endorsed by many

predicativist mathematicians in the early 20th
century to prevent contradiction the
principle states that no object or property
may be introduced by a definition that
depends on that object or itself.
Vicious circle of human development