Population (n.) is a level of abstraction at which one can pick out constants and regularities in ensembles of elements even when it comes to accidents.
Population (n.) is a new technology of power which is not exactly society (i.e. The social body) nor the individual body, but a new body, a multiple body whose heads are uncountable without being infinite).
Population (n.) is a specific objectivity, having its own regularities, its own rate of deaths and diseases, its cycles of scarcity, and so on.
Population (n.) is a methodology that was originally related to catastrophes and mortality tables, tables that made a quantification of knowledge about the causes of death.
Population (n.) is the object of an art of government that involved regulating the population to act in accord with its own inherent laws.