From the Origin of Species to the end of the Second World War, this chapter explores the organic episteme that has shaped much of the world we live in today. Offering an alternative to rigid, mechanistic conceptions of reality and humanity, organic power-knowledge conceives existence as a natural, generative process in which life competes, adapts, fails and flourishes. It establishes humanity as a biological species—a component of nature subject to its processes and rhythms. Exploring the work of Thomas Malthus, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Joseph Schumpeter and Francis Galton, the chapter documents an array of efforts to manage the production of life—often by acceding to, or even accelerating, death. These efforts are informed and amplified by a new form of power, ‘governmentality’, a permissive, insidious and highly effective means of population control premised on the identification and management of ‘risk’.