Darwin and Wallace both thought of natural selection on reading Malthus's essay on the principle of population. I guess that's a reproducible route to the idea

Darwin and Wallace both thought of natural selection on reading Malthus's essay on the principle of population. I guess that's a reproducible route to the idea -- send a curious British naturalist to South America and some islands, then loan them a copy of Malthus. I'd like to read Malthus myself someday and see how close he came. Darwin did some historical research on his predecessors for a later edition of the Origin. Wallace wasn't the only independent discoverer, though the others did not take it nearly as far. https://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/2013/08/predecessors-of-darwin-and-wallace.html https://historiesofecology.blogspot.com/2013/08/predecessors...