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A thousand years before Darwin, Islamic scholars were writing about natural selection

#1
C C Offline
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ep4ykn/a...-selection

EXCERPT: . . . many students are taught about evolution they learn about Darwin, how he observed bird beaks on the Galápagos Islands, and pieced together one of history's most significant biological puzzles. But this narrative, focusing on a singular person's "I think," omits a long history of humans contemplating how organisms change over time. Evolutionary musings have existed before Darwin, and some professors and museums are now striving to include that neglected history in curriculums and exhibitions.

Recently, New York University professor James Higham tweeted about how he updated the lectures of his class on primate behavioral ecology, geared to upper-level undergraduates. They now "properly acknowledge Islamic scholarship in this area—especially that of Al-Jahiz (781-869 CE)," Higham wrote. "It seems clear that something like evolution by natural selection was proposed a thousand years before Darwin/Wallace." (The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection around the same time as Darwin.)

Higham told VICE News he wasn’t taught about Al-Jahiz in his own training; he knew of Al-Jahiz vaguely as a theologian, writer, and scholar, but not a biologist. “I was struck by the extent to which Al-Jahiz appears to have had not just evolutionary ideas, but many ideas that could be said to be related specifically to the process of evolution by natural selection,” Higham said in an email. “This seems to have included ideas such as competition over finite resources, adaptation in response to the environment, and speciation over time as an outcome.”

His tweet referenced a graph of eight pre-Darwin Muslim scholars who wrote about evolutionary ideas, from "An untold story in biology: the historical continuity of evolutionary ideas of Muslim scholars from the 8th century to Darwin’s time," a 2017 paper by senior author Rui Diogo, an assistant professor at Howard University. Higham plans to include Al-Jahiz and other pre-Darwin scholars in his large intro class on human origins as well. Other academics replied to Higham's tweet, saying they were taking similar action. Like Andy Higginson, an ecologist and Senior Lecturer at University of Exeter who responded, "I did the same for a lecture last week!"

There is no evidence that Darwin knew of Islamic scholars from the 9th or 10th centuries, said Salman Hameed, the director of the Centre for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts—but the purpose of including mention of past scholars isn't to say that Darwin copied them, or drew from them, or to in any way diminish his legacy... (MORE - details)
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Cynical Sindee: Meh. Give it another decade or two, and the grievance movement to eradicate WEIRD culture{*} will have Darwin replaced on the grounds of his being another white privileged blankety-blank.

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{*} WEIRD acronym: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (roots in Abrahamic and ancient Greek influence; private property ownership slash capitalism)
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#2
Ben the Donkey Offline
I found it quite interesting. I've often thought about ideas formulating over time, bubbling away in the cauldron as it were.
While Darwin might have been specific about biology when writing "On the Evolution of Species", the core concept of evolution has been applied to nearly every walk of life - social, technological, philosophical, what have you.
So the knowledge regarding earlier scholars talking about these ideas in a more prototypical form isn't surprising.
Which is not to imply that Darwin did have any prior knowledge of earlier ideas, of course. The possibility is there, but we are never likely to know, one way or the other. It's hardly impossible for ideas to originate independently of each other.

But I've never liked them being referred to (in this case and others) as "Islamic" scholars. That they were Islamic is neither here nor there (until the subcontext of ideological framework comes into play, as the article discussed). The extent to which any scientific thought is influenced by religion (in this case) and how much of the final product is "playing for the crowd", as it were, in order to facilitate acceptance, is likely to remain conjecture subject to what we know of those involved.

I was vaguely annoyed the other day when reading an article with the headline "Two Women win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry". I have no idea how Charpentier and Doudna would have felt about it personally (if anything at all), but for me it was yet another indication the pendulum is still swinging... and personally speaking, I can understand why it is and be discomfited by it at the same time.
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#3
Zinjanthropos Offline
Weren't these same ancient scholars ok with royalty marrying royalty., you know, keep it in the family/? They figured something was up, just couldn't quite nail it. Not like we're just observing nature for the first time. I think a lost tribe in the jungles of Borneo would have their version
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#4
Ben the Donkey Offline
You might actually be on to something there. Just how old are these ideas, anyway?

I'm not speaking of fully-formulated theories, of course, any more than you are.
But the evolution of the theory goes back a long, long way. You're right.
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#5
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Oct 9, 2020 05:57 PM)Ben the Donkey Wrote: You might actually be on to something there. Just how old are these ideas, anyway?

I'm not speaking of fully-formulated theories, of course, any more than you are.
But the evolution of the theory goes back a long, long way. You're right.

I picture a nomadic tribe who can't help but notice that a gray mouse from the area they just left is no longer around for instance, it's been replaced by one with racing stripes aka chipmunk. Not hard to notice the basic model, a head, eyes, ears ,mouth etc. I think a scholar would have been all over it. Probably been a few Darwins over the centuries.
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