This is a short sample of the complete publication.
Introduction
In asking me to cover this topic in two to three thousand words the Editor gave me a difficult task. One reason
for this is that – unless one takes the really long view – there are strongly conflicting trends in Western thought
on population and development issues, and these are very difficult to resolve into a single coherent frame.
However, in the knowledge that small seeds grow into fair-sized plants I agreed to try, and in an effort to
provide some sort of coherence I made it more autobiographical than would otherwise be desirable.
The Long View
Briefly harking back to the long view I must stress that population problems are hardy perennials. One of the
oldest literary documents extant, a poem baked on to a clay tablet in ancient Babylon, is a cri-de-coeur for
population control. Nearly two millennia later, the authors of the Bible also made many references to
population pressure and conflict over scarce resources.
Again, the ancient Chinese, Indians, Greeks, and Romans all wrote copiously in both practical and highly
sophisticated theoretical ways on these topics. They spelt out the allegedly Malthusian idea of exponential
growth, the need for population controls, and – of special relevance in this context – very definite opinions on
optimum sizes. Egyptian papyri nearly four thousand years old list biochemical birth control techniques and
appliances and anyone wishing to think seriously about these issues should dip into some of these works:
Aristotle's Politics, at the very least.
The Middle Term
Throughout the second millennium AD, many other scholars and men and women of affairs increasingly wrote
about population issues with evergreater professionalism; for instance, Thomas Aquinas (b.1226), Ibn
Khaldun (b.1332), Machiavelli (b.1469), Botero (b.1540), Francis Bacon (b.1561), Sir William Petty (b.1623),
Edmund Halley (b.1646), Benjamin Franklin (b.1706), David Hume (b.1711), and numerous others, far too
many to list here.