The intersection where Adam Smith, T. Robert Malthus, and Charles Darwin met

Adam Smith, T. Robert Malthus, and Charles Darwin: They are respectively founders of modern methodological frameworks in economics, demography, and biology. This paper first introduces studies in current literature in which these three subjects overlap, and points to the two types of complementarities that allow the performing of such cross-disciplinary studies. Next, this paper traces back the history of modern science and shows that Smith, Malthus, and Darwin applied these complementarities to develop their respective frameworks. Smith employed the biological perspective on human nature to establish the economic methodology, often referred to as methodological individualism, Darwin applied the economic methodology to found modern biology, and Malthus stood in the middle, demonstrating that demography plays a crucial role in the field where economics and biology overlap. This suggests that the cross-disciplinary approach at this intersection is indeed orthodox.