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Influence of Human Reproduction on Environment a
Author(s) -
KEYFITZ NATHAN
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1994.tb30420.x
Subject(s) - annals , population , citation , library science , reproduction , operations research , sociology , political science , computer science , history , classics , mathematics , demography , biology , ecology
Disciplinary isolation: like species with common descent, between whom a barrier has arisen, the disciplines have evolved independently. Each discipline evolves on its own dynamic. We are not concerned with opinions of eccentric individual scholars, but with the mainstreams, in particular of biology and economics that today strongly disagree. The disciplines have changed sides. Biology and economics disagreed also in the 19th century, but then biologists were optimists, economists pessimists, on the population-holding capacity of the Earth. Words are used differently in different disciplines, and that arises from and maintains different styles of thought, so that language is one of the barriers between disciplines. A serious matter when "data do not support family planning" is taken as an argument against family planning. Failure to support the hypothesis being tested by no means proves the hypothesis; it is as likely to show merely that the data are inadequate.