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 a theory of evolution into the scientific body of knowledge. More than discovering it, Darwin's achievement was the clear and irrefutable formulation of 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.
https://www.ias.edu/news/in-the-media/freeman-dyson-biologic...
If you want an alternate source:
Yeah I wouldn't call what he did primarily demonstrating, but gets you on that path (and IIRC he had several examples to point to for concepts).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...
It's also interesting to note that Darwin's theory had to be reformulated several times before it could match contemporary data. I'm talking specifically the Modern Synthesis (Darwin + Mendel) but also more contemporary syntheses such as Koonin, Huneman & Walsh, etc. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_synthesis_(20th_century...
Not even Alfred Russell Wallace?
No. For 3 reasons:
1) Mendel's work "appeared" after Darwin's. The Origin of Species was published in 1859. Mendel presented his work on 1865. True, Mendel did send a letter to Darwin explaining his work but it seems very unlikely Darwin ever read or understood it. Mendel had a very obscure and hard to understand writing style.
2) By "appeared" above I refer to the fact that Mendel's work remained completely ignored for decades. All of his scientific papers were burned by the abbot that succeeded him in the monastery. It was Hugo DeVries that rediscovered his work at the beginning of 20th century. Again, Mendel's hard writing style played against him.
3) Mendel never cared about random mutation and natural selection, the fundamental elements of evolution. He only recorded the combinatorial patterns on pea's traits deducing the recessive/dominant traits. Truth be told, today these are a small part of gene expression. The metabolic pathways of gene expression are much more complex than just the recessive/dominant pattern.
[1] https://twitter.com/shahanSean/status/1314372114946895873
[2] https://www.academia.edu/39234303/Old_Texts_New_Masks_A_Crit...
This is true of every media outlet. There is no media outlet free from some agenda. By exercising editorial control, they are fundamentally choosing which articles to publish and how they will be presented.
In fact, it has a qurʾanic pedigree: the Qurʾan speaks of God punishing the wicked – especially Jewish violators of the Sabbath – by transforming them into baser creatures, such as apes and pigs. This has about as much to do with evolution as Kafka’s 𝑀𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑠...
> 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.
Just commenting to say that this is a great book, and I would gladly recommend it to anybody wanting a basic overview of western philosophy. I don't know or care if it's the most academically or historically nuanced analysis; I just enjoyed getting a synopsis of different philosophers' lives and ideas.
Interesting, thanks. For a well organized and presented survey of the history of western civilization, I'd recommend Eugen Weber's[0] The Western Tradition[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Weber
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCyO8meahME&list=PL1U_8A7q8L...
In investigating the remaining invididuals mentioned in this piece, it appears that not one of them is of a doctrinal pedigree similar to that of Ibn Khaldun's (who is what the general public would refer to as a Sunni Muslim). To juxtapose the label of "Islamic" next to the opinions of Mu'tazilites, "Neoplatonist" and Shiites in regard to the theories of evolution, natural selection, et cetera, does not spell for a valid argument from a purely traditional point of view. The likes of those mentioned in this article would be deemed heretic at the least and out of the fold of Islam entirely at the most.
This article is a product of the misappropriation and degradation of Islamic scholarship and history in academia and abroad for the sake of "pluralism" and "inclusiveness". It is unfortunate that Ibn Khaldun has to be shoehorned into these arguments. Anyone involved in these sort of studies would pain themselves to find reputable scholars of Sunni Islam propogating or inclining toward Darwinist thought to the degree of the aforementioned groups that are traditionally established to be deviated from the main stream.
[1]: https://www.islamicboard.com/health-amp-science/134349270-ib... [2]: https://archive.org/details/ibn_khaldun-al_muqaddimah_201611
https://www.academia.edu/39234303/Old_Texts_New_Masks_A_Crit...
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/10/07/did-arabs-come-up-...
Whew. That's definitely NOT something you can say generally of Christians. The ones saying crazy stuff get all the attention, but it's not as mainstream as you might have been led to believe.
For example, current (I think) Catholic doctrine is similar to the Islamic position you describe:
Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. ... Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God despite himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.
So that's a rather large fraction of Christians. (I was raised Catholic, and, "truth cannot contradict truth" -- obviously a reference to the same thing as this catechism -- was what I was told on this question. So from my perspective, this wasn't just an obscure position, but something actively taught.)
If you're interested, here's a link to the wikipedia article, which has links to other sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_the_Catholic_Churc...
This seems like a very narrow concept of Christianity.
While there are certainly Christian sects that reject well-established concepts it’s far from the norm.
This isn't far from what I heard from some of my Christian friends, which just makes all the worlds religions more much more alike then they differ.
I come from Malaysia and I see how evolution as a topic is studiously avoided in school curriculum.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/08/20/540965889/... [1]: http://blogs.nature.com/houseofwisdom/2011/05/saudi_arabia_l...
As more people become scientifically literate hopefully it will push religions to adopt a more rational interpretation of their beliefs.
Ever heard of the Jesuits?
So... Who invented computers? god. Who discovered radium? god... Who earned all nobel prices? god? :-) Exams must be really easy then.
This is politics or ideology, not science.
Ideology wearing a fur of dead science is more common that it seems nowadays (and is not exclusive from Islamic schools, it seems)
Nitpick, but much of the golden age of science in the Islamic world was not performed by Arabs, but by other Muslims (central Asians, etc).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamic_scholars_descr...
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 a lot of support for these theories among Muslims, including the idea of evolution of one kind or another.
[1] https://quran.com/21/30?translations=32,40,84,19,21,20,101,8...
I think it’s about you can expect from randomly picking fragments, and throwing away variants that do not hold up to simple scrutiny such as “but what do these animals eat?” or “if there’s no water yet, where do these fish live?”.
About the only thing it gets truly right is the creation of water life before land life.
As a Christian but decidedly not a biblical literalist, that's...just not true, without a whole lot of strained appeal to metaphor informed by knowing the answer you want it to get to.
Genesis has two mutually incompatible creation stories, and while the reference to "days" means this has to refer to the first one, its not really true of either of them.
I mean the first one has creation in this order of days:
(1) Light, day vs. night
(2) separation of the waters (which, incidentally, appear to preexist creation, as they don't get created anywhere) into waters above and waters below, divided by a "firmament" which is named Heaven.
(3) Gathering of the waters below the firmament into one place (the Seas), producing dry land as side effect. And the creation of grass, herb-yielding seed, and fruit trees on the land.
(4) Creation of the Sun, Moon, and stars.
(5) Creation of sea and avian animals.
(6) Creation of (non-avian) land animals, including man.
That's more than a couple days out of order.
Another issue is that many texts are vague and open for interpretation so people can make it "make sense" regardless of how wrong/ridiculous/innacurate it is.
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.
Absolutely. These sorts of post-hoc interpretations are particularly common in some branches of Hindu nationalism, where verses of sacred texts (such as the Vedas) are interpreted as representing foreknowledge of modern scientific discoveries, often couched in an anticolonialist narrative such as "Western science stole this knowledge from ancient India".
Not disagreeing with you (based on my own experience), but I would caution against generalizations when dealing with a population of over a billion. In some Muslim countries, over half the population believes in evolution.
I can't find a comprehensive study on this, but the theory of evolution is taught in high schools in many (most?) Muslim countries (even if they don't "believe" in it). Indeed, I suspect the opposition in several states in the US is greater than in many Muslim countries. Iran, for example, teaches it in a fair amount of detail.
In addition, the situation is fairly dynamic (e.g. taught in a given country, but banned a few years ago, or vice versa).
The scam just works better if you don't make it quite so easy to falsify.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CptJLtvWcAAdIiS?format=jpg&name=...
It's even more important to note that many things in astronomy, science of many things, time period of planet Earth, eras of the Planet and how things will be, are described as well in the Vedas.
Similarly, there are many surprising facts in astronomy. They found only the 6 planets though. Every celestial body other than a star was called as planet.. so, they had navagrahas (9 planets which included sun, moon along with other planets).. and their perfect calculations of eclipses, planetary distances, etc is itself amazing.
I'm skeptical that religion ever contains a story or statement that represents modern scientific truth except as an accident or as a post-hoc interpretation to make it consistent with the science.
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.
The purpose of educators and writers giving animals etc. human qualities is intentional - it makes people more focused and concerned about losing nature and preventing the possible collapse of the environment's food chains, not about intentionally miseducating the public.
Anyway, you want to understand selection, it's not helping.
I once read something by another Muslim around same time discussing atoms. I believed that to be fake but now after reading this. I am going to look it up again.
Attribution to God is cultural. It's done with literally everything (even to the food someone just made for you). As acceptance of the creator, it makes it very convenient to discuss nearly any subject while maintaining it.
RIP Science.
https://sci-hub.se/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10...
What's your intention behind this question?
I'm wondering if the idea of common descend, that an actual individual animal is the grand-grand-grand-father of all living mammals, which derives from the theory of evolution, is accepted by modern Islam or was intuited by these scholars. Not merely shared properties, lineage. I'm wondering this because I would find it surprising and fascinating.
which isn't to say this came with a theory of natural selection
Nitpicking any theory in support of God's existence and not even consider any findings/research/point of view.
Isn't this plain ignorance?
