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
#2Crazy how natural selection didn't start with darwin and even crazier that people keep discovering this.
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#3natural selection doesn't fare well with leftis minds.
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#4natural selection doesn't fare well with leftis minds.
You sounded like the guys you are mocking? I.e. baseless claim without proofs?
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#5natural selection doesn't fare well with leftis minds.
Well there was Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia, but generally I don't think there's much of a correlation between socialism and a belief in or skepticism of evolution. Although Karl Marx himself was a big believer in Darwin's theory and wrote about it in glowing terms
Funnily enough in modern America conservatism is very heavily correlated with creationism and Intelligent Design, through the Republican alliance with fundamental Christians and the influence of the Discovery Institute. Frankly as a British conservative who grew up in the Reagan/Thatcher days I look at modern US Republicanism with a mix of bemusement and horror, but that's beside the point.
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#6So what's the precedent for rewriting the textbooks to reflect this new understanding? The ones that come to mind are Mendel, Democritus, Aristarchus of Samos.
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#7I 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, but I think there are worlds in between.
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#8I'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 needs the organism survives and perpetuates its like; where the combination fails, the organism is weeded out; as time goes on, organisms are more and more intricately and successfully adapted to their surroundings.
Durant, Will. Story of Philosophy (p. 82). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#9I 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".
Re: 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
#10I 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…
Here's a blog post laying out in detail the gulf from Darwin:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/10/07/did-arabs-come-up-...