Struggle for existence
The concept of the struggle for existence concerns the competition or battle for resources needed to live. It can refer to human society, or to organisms in nature. The concept is ancient, and the term struggle for existence was in use by the end of the 18th century. From the 17th century onwards the concept was associated with a population exceeding resources, an issue shown starkly in Thomas Robert Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population which drew on Benjamin Franklin's Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc..
It is sometimes forgotten that Charles Darwin used the term "struggle for existence" in what he called a metaphorical sense. This was because he used it to refer not only to direct competition between species but indirect competition. Darwin noted that the struggle for existence could also involve active or passive mutual aid between organisms of the same or different species, instancing social insects.
Darwin made the term the title of his third chapter in On the Origin of Species published in 1859. Taking up Malthus's idea of the struggle for existence, Darwin was able to develop his view of adaptation, which was highly influential in the formulation of the theory of natural selection. In addition, Alfred Wallace independently used the concept of the struggle for existence to help come to the same theory of evolution. Later, T.H. Huxley further developed the idea of the struggle for existence. Huxley did not fully agree with Darwin on natural selection, but he did agree that there was a struggle for existence in nature. Huxley also recognized that a struggle for existence existed between competing ideas within the minds of people engaged in intellectual discussion. This view is an early example of what was later described as meme theory.
While the idea of the struggle for existence was developing in the western world, there were other interpretations of the struggle for existence, especially by Peter Kropotkin in Russia. Borrowing the phrase mutual aid from Darwin, he published Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, partially as a response to an essay called "The Struggle for Existence" by Huxley. Also, the struggle for existence was questioned in the United States in the 1930s, as the idea of cooperation among organisms became popular. More recently, it has been argued that the struggle for existence is not as important on macroevolutionary time scales.
Background
The idea of the struggle for existence has been used in multiple disciplines. It became popular in the mid 19th century, through the work of Malthus, Darwin, Wallace, and others. The most popular use of the struggle for existence is in the explanation of the theory of natural selection by Charles Darwin. For more technical information on how the struggle for existence is meshed with the theory of natural selection see the main article for natural selection.Historical development
The concept of a struggle for existence goes back to antiquity: Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote of struggle being the father of everything, and Aristotle in his History of Animals observed that "There is enmity between such animals as dwell in the same localities or subsist on the same food. If the means of subsistence run short, creatures of like kind will fight together." From translations, the 9th century Arabic scholar Al-Jahiz apparently listed ways in which animals "can not exist without food, neither can the hunting animal escape being hunted in his turn", similarly "God has disposed some human beings as a cause of life for others, and likewise, he has disposed the latter as a cause of the death of the former."In his Leviathan of 1651, Thomas Hobbes described vividly an unbridled human struggle over resources, a "war of every man against every man" if unrestrained by state power. This was the doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes.
Matthew Hale in The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature described the struggles of hunter and prey animals. Anticipating Malthus, he proposed that a wise Providence made periodic Reductions in excessive numbers of animals, as with human population "to keep it within such bounds as may keep it from surcharging the World" so that "by these Prunings there may be a consistency in the Numbers of Mankind, with an eternal succession of individuals." The Reductions experienced by humanity were "1. Plagues and Epidemical Diseases: 2. Famines: 3. Wars and Internecions: 4. Floods and Inundations: 5: Conflagrations."
Buffon and Franklin, population growth
Population increase causing the struggle for existence was given numerical expression by Buffon in 1751. He calculated that an elm seed would produce a tree which, after 10 years, produced 1,000 seeds. If each were sown, the whole globe would be converted into trees in 150 years. Similarly, "if we were to hatch every egg produced by hens for a space of 30 years, there would be a sufficient number of fowls to cover the whole surface of the earth." Taking the example of herrings, if "prodigious numbers of them were not destroyed" each year they would soon cover the surface of the sea, but they would then be destroyed by "contagion and famine", so it was necessary and right that animals preyed on each other.Amidst debates on fears of British depopulation, Benjamin Franklin collected statistics of the American colonies which he published in his Poor Richard Improved of 1750 with the question of "how long will it be, before by an Increase of 64 per Annum, 34,000 people will double themselves?" He concluded: "People increase faster by Generation in these Colonies, where all can have full Employ, and there is Room and Business for Millions yet unborn. For in old settled Countries, as England for instance, as soon as the Number of People is as great as can be supported by all the Tillage, Manufactures, Trade and Offices of the Country, the Over-plus must quit the Country, or they will perish by Poverty, Diseases, and want of Necessaries. Marriage too, is discouraged, many declining it, till they can see how they shall be able to maintain a Family."
In 1751, Franklin wrote his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. proposing a 25-year doubling period in the colonies, an exponential growth in population. Over the following century, this forecast was remarkably accurate. His paper was widely circulated, and had considerable influence: Malthus cited the period as "a rate in which all concurring testimonies agree." Franklin's view was optimistic:
Those migrating to America would "have their places at home soon supplied" and "increase so largely here" that there was no need for other immigrants.
Balance of warring nature
continued an earlier theme of harmonious balance between plants and animals. In the late 18th century, naturalists saw the struggle for existence as part of an ordered balance of nature, but they increasingly recognised the fierceness of struggle and the fossil record shook ideas of permanent harmony. Carl Linnaeus saw an overall benign balance, but also showed calculations of the Earth quickly filling with one species if it reproduced unchecked,and referred to "bellum omnium perpetuum in omnes, et horrenda laniena".
In 1773 James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, noted that "the most fruitful country can be overstocked with any animal and particularly with man", and "when men were so multiplied that the natural fruits of the earth could not maintain them", they could emigrate, prey on other animals or each other, or preferably "associate and provide in common what singly they could not procure." In 1775 Kant visualised inner and outer struggle as the impetus for man passing from a rude state of nature to a citizen, Herder in 1784 saw a personified Nature promoting huge numbers of organisms competing for resources so that "the whole creation is at war", crowding "her creatures one upon another" to "produce the greatest number and variety of living beings in the least space, so that one crushes another, and an equilibrium of powers can alone bring peace to the creation." For William Smellie in 1790 a profusion of animal life improved "in proportion to the number of enemies they have to attack or evade", and by making animals feed upon each other, the system of animation and of happiness is extended to the greatest possible degree. In this view, Nature, instead of being cruel and oppressive, is highly generous and beneficent."
Erasmus Darwin in his Temple of Nature returned to Linnaean imagery, "From Hunger's arms the shafts of Death are hurl'd; And one great Slaughter‐house the warring world!"
Origins of the term
The term struggle for existence was already in use by this time.For example, in 1790 Jeremy Bentham proposed reformed elections as "a contest for distinction, not a struggle for existence", and in 1795 The Monthly Review used it to describe trees when discussing Thomas Cooper's Some Information Respecting America. In a House of Lords speech on 2 November 1797, Lord Gwydir said they were engaged "in a struggle for existence as a nation" in the French Revolutionary Wars. Benjamin Disraeli included the phrase "a density of population implies a severe struggle for existence" in his novel Sybil, which was about the plight of the working class in Britain.