Population theory--A long view

Any attempt to take a long view of population research, its findings, and applications is bound to raise questions about the state of population theory. Recent research on the history of population thought enables us to include a much more complete account of classical and early modern sources, and of parallel and complementary developments in population biology. This paper considers four major shifts in the conceptual and empirical ambitions of population inquiry over the long term. In general, major conceptual developments in ideas about population reflect major shifts in political and biological theory. The nature of population in European science and society was substantially established before demography emerged as a twentieth-century academic discipline focused chiefly on fertility and mortality. A long view suggests that demography is currently in the course of a shift that constructively re-integrates it with the wider field of scientific and historical population thinking.