Nature and Man's Fate
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"In the days before Pasteur man's population was maintained approximately constant from generation to generation by a cybernetic system in which the principal feedback element at the upper limit was disease. The crowd-diseases — smallpox, cholera, typhoid, plague, etc. — are, by the ecologist, labeled "density-dependent factors," whose effectiveness in reducing population is a power function of the density of the population. No growth of population could get out of hand as long as the crowd-diseases were unconquered, which means that man did not have to sit in judgment on man, to decide who should have a cover at Nature’s feast and who should not." --Nature and Man's Fate (1965) by Garrett Hardin |
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Nature and Man's Fate (1965) is a book by Garrett Hardin.