Determine the oldest ideas in economics
One of the oldest ideas in economics is that increases in technology certainly run into natural resource scarcity and so lead to increase in the numbers of people though not in their standard of living of productivity. This idea was proposed into economics late by Thomas R. Malthus who was to be first academic professor of economics (Adam Smith had been a professor of moral philosophy) at the East India Company's Hailey bury College.
Malthus saw a world in that inventions and higher living standards led to increase in the rate of population growth. With higher living standards women ovulated more frequently. More pregnancies were successfully carried to term. Better-nourished children (and adults) had a better chance of resisting diseases. Furthermore when incomes were high new farmsteads are relatively ample and getting the permission of one's father or elder brother to marry was easier. For these reasons both biological and social, a higher standard of living back before 1800 led to a faster rate of population increase. And faster rates of population growth increased natural resource scarcity and lowered productivity until once again people were so poor and undernourished that population growth was roughly zero.