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1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

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Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#61

Post by macspoofing »

sfjailbird wrote: post #47

There is a verse in the Quran[1] about the origins of the universe and life: And have not the ones who disbelieved seen that the heavens and the earth were an integrated (mass), then We unseamed them, and of water We have made every living thing? Would they then not believe? Commentators observe that this verse at the same time lends support to the idea of the Big Bang, and the origins of life in water. Thus there is…

It's easy to make post-hoc interpretations of these kinds of verses to make them fit anything.

The reality is that there is quite a lot evolution denialism in the Islamic world - which should suggest that there is nothing obviously pro-evolution in the Quran.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#62

Post by [deleted] »

Ccecil wrote: post #50
sfjailbird wrote: post #47

There is a verse in the Quran[1] about the origins of the universe and life: And have not the ones who disbelieved seen that the heavens and the earth were an integrated (mass), then We unseamed them, and of water We have made every living thing? Would they then not believe? Commentators observe that this verse at the same time lends support to the idea of the Big Bang, and the origins of life in water. Thus there is…

I find it interesting that the story of "Genesis" in the Bible basically goes through the order of operations for how the universe formed (aside from a couple of the days out of order...but it is very close). It does lean towards at least a reasonable assumption of what came first. Makes me think there was some sort of "knowledge" being encoded in the story that was attempting to teach the uneducated of the time.

[deleted]

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#64

Post by pvaldes »

eska wrote: post #43
rtkwe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you're misunderstanding, what I think they're saying is that things like evolution, big bang, etc are the mechanisms of god, i.e. god set all this in motion. It's an easy way to integrate science and religion so long as you're not a biblical (or whatever the equivalent in your religion is) literalist. Maybe god did setup this universe like a giant clockwork toy and all we're discovering are the gears and springs o…

That contradicts with the article. The article states that the Muslim scholar theorized that god actively mutates the animals that want to adapt, i.e. god didn't just invent "the mechanism" of mutation, as you say.

> Muslim scholar theorized that god actively mutates the animals that want to adapt,

This theory is a pastiche trying to use the "good parts" from Darwinism and is clearly worse than the original

Anybody claiming this, just don't have a deep understanding of mutations. Mutations are not a god's gift. Maths and science predict that they happen randomly, and most of the time they carry terrible consequences.

Lets take for example the people that inherited the butterfly skin syndrome. With a so fragile skin that it rips from the shoulder to the waistline at the minimum brush. Do this girl or this boy wanted to "adapt" to have a insufferable pain all the days of this life?

I seriously doubt that anybody would have asked for that. Lets be serious.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#65

Post by rtkwe »

eska wrote: post #43
rtkwe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you're misunderstanding, what I think they're saying is that things like evolution, big bang, etc are the mechanisms of god, i.e. god set all this in motion. It's an easy way to integrate science and religion so long as you're not a biblical (or whatever the equivalent in your religion is) literalist. Maybe god did setup this universe like a giant clockwork toy and all we're discovering are the gears and springs o…

That contradicts with the article. The article states that the Muslim scholar theorized that god actively mutates the animals that want to adapt, i.e. god didn't just invent "the mechanism" of mutation, as you say.

I was talking in a more general sense not about the specific mechanism in the article, more about the general way science and religion can at least coexist somewhat coherently which is something a lot of online athiests perplexed by.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#66

Post by macspoofing »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #57
ilamont wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the Vice and the peer-reviewed articles contain numberous misconceptions that could have been avoided if an Arabist or medievalist were consulted. I’ll focus on three that seem to be persistent on Internet but that originate in the 19th cent (more on that later)... #1. The 𝐾𝑖𝑡𝑎̄𝑏 𝑎𝑙-𝐻̣𝑎𝑦𝑎𝑤𝑎̄𝑛 (Eng. The Book of Living Things) of al-Jāḥiẓ is not a work zoology or biology. It is a literary b…

I mean as late as Newton and Euler the division between theology and science was still mushy? Everything here makes sense, but hardly seems like a refutation to me.

>I mean as late as Newton and Euler the division between theology and science was still mushy?

All the more reason to be very careful in interpreting those writings and mapping them to modern scientific notions.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#67

Post by JoeAltmaier »

I saw that old explanation "living things have an innate urge for survival" in there. Its not necessary at all, and diminishes the idea of natural selection.

Creatures/species don't get selected because of what they want. The ones that behave to avoid early death (before reproduction) are represented larger in the population. The makeup of the population shifts over time. That's it. That's about all. No need to imagine an urge.

Further, some (many) creatures die during reproduction. They have no urge for survival at all - just the opposite.

To go on, plants are subject to selection. Do they have urges too? Insects can hardly be attributed complex emotions - more like little robots. They are subject to selection, with no need for urges.

No, its all a game of dice and happenstance.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#68

Post by ARandomerDude »

diego_moita wrote: post #30

This is like saying the pre-socratic Greek philosophers "discovered" the atom. Their "discovery" was just vague speculation. Darwin didn't just say "evolution happens", he demonstrated it. Before him no one else demonstrated it. Surely, a lot scholars speculated about evolution long before Darwin. One of them was Erasmus Darwin, Charles grandfather. But that misses the whole point: no other scholar was able to embed…

> Darwin didn't just say "evolution happens", he demonstrated it.

Not really. He described the idea in greater detail, but he didn't demonstrate it. It's actually quite similar to the pre-Socratics in that way.

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#69

Post by booleandilemma »

curiousgal wrote: post #9
eska wrote: post #7

I was excited to hear about this due to the golden age of science in the Arabic world, which was a high point of Arabic culture that has since then unfortunately declined. But wondering how the scholar was able to do this research despite Islam, it turns out that he made god responsible for the mutation, the animals just have a desire to adapt. The article makes it sound like that's a trivial difference to Darwin, bu…

I grew up in a Muslim country, unlike Christianity, Islam accepts scientific discoveries but attributes them to God instead. For instance, we were taught about the Big Bang in an Islamic Thinking class but the trick was that "God was responsible for it".

unlike Christianity, Islam accepts scientific discoveries

Ever heard of the Jesuits?

Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection

#70

Post by ARandomerDude »

techbio wrote: post #16
steveridout wrote: post #8

I'm currently reading "Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant and was struck by this even earlier reference to a process of evolution by natural selection: > Empedocles (fl. 445 B.C., in Sicily) developed to a further stage the idea of evolution. Organs arise not by design but by selection. Nature makes many trials and experiments with organisms, combining organs variously; where the combination meets environmental need…

I would be pleased to hear from a classicist on this point as Durant compiled his history well after Darwin.

SEP's take on it: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/empedocles/#Zoog
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