An Islamic "On the Origin of Species"
- Thread starter Emperor Qianlong
- Start date
well, let's take a look at some random example...
There's not a single word on those horses' looks, it's all about trade. I'd rather expect 'Wealth of Nations' from this sort of a man, not 'Origins of Species'
.Just a quick bump...
According to a Radio 4 programme I heard yesterday, and backed up by a bit of Wikipedia searching, Al-Jahiz, a famous Arab scholar, did come up with an early theory of evolution in the 8th or 9th century. Related ideas may have influenced Darwin too. See also here.
According to a Radio 4 programme I heard yesterday, and backed up by a bit of Wikipedia searching, Al-Jahiz, a famous Arab scholar, did come up with an early theory of evolution in the 8th or 9th century. Related ideas may have influenced Darwin too. See also here.
George Carty
Banned
Is that one way in which Islam itself could be said to have held back the Muslim world? After all, it is because Islam' iconoclasm that calligraphy became such an important art form within the Muslim lands...
Another explanation I've encountered though for the Muslim reluctance to adopt printing is simply that it is a formidable technical challenge to develop a set of movable type that can do justice to Arabic script...
I think mainly for religous question:
the hand-copying of the koran is (or was, I do not know if it is still now) considered a prayer in itself, and doing it by means of a machine would be considered somewhat sacrilegous.
Obviously there were also not-so-holy reasons: the calligrapher's guild would not be pleased with printing, and probably some bags of coins did passed to the imams who gived the right fatwas
.In any way, if I remember correctly, Selim the Terrible issued a law forbidding printing on death penalty.
And you don't mess with laws done by someone called the Terrible As one might expect, the restiction gradually faded away beginning from books in languages different from arabic (IIRC they began printing in armenian), since the religious taboo was not sustainable there, and only later printing arrived at turkish language (which at the time used the arabic letters).
That meant that for a long part of history most of printing regarded only a very limited portion of society
Well I'd think any Islamic origin of species wouldn't be nearly so rigorous due to lacking the huge body of evidence Darwin drew on and the rapid travel and collection of specimens available to 18th+ century museums. There is also the lack of the principle of superposition as relates to fossils which would make it difficult to interpret fossils in an evolutionary world view (and developing that idea took ages for the Europeans and serious digging work).
With that it'll any theory will probably end up a curiosity, ignored, and then revived a few hundred years later when enough backing has turned up.
With that it'll any theory will probably end up a curiosity, ignored, and then revived a few hundred years later when enough backing has turned up.
Valdemar II
Banned
Of course the question whether you can blame Islam for that, it seem more of a case where the Luddites was succesful in keeping "machines" from taking their jobs.
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
It really depends on where and when. Different states were more conservative than others at different times.
If it was couched in scientific investigation, I don't think it would be that big a deal. The Quran is more vague about creation than the Bible; there are even verses that you could probably make fit Big Bang theory:
"The heavens, We have built them with power. And verily, We are expanding it." (51:47)
"the heavens and the earth were joined together as one unit, before We clove them asunder" (21:30).
Also, days are explicitly symbolic: ""a day in the sight of your Lord is like 1,000 years of your reckoning" (22:47).
As Ridwan said, Allah "made from water every living thing" (21:30) and "Allah has created every animal from water. Of them are some that creep on their bellies, some that walk on two legs, and some that walk on four. Allah creates what He wills, for truly Allah has power over all things" (24:45).
"What is wrong with you, that you are not conscious of God's majesty? Seeing that it is He who has created you in diverse stages?" (71:13)
Anyway, these are all just things that could be used in a defense of a scientific theory.
In any case, Islamic scholars did have a theory of evolution in the Dark Ages, although it wasn't natural selection - it was more about an organism changing to survive its environment, which is close. Making the leap to natural selection would be a small one and not likely to really upset a world view that would regard it as part of God's overall creation - "intelligent design". There's a Hadith, but I couldn't find it, that said that rejecting science is rejecting God's laws of the universe, and thus sin.
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
Not really. It's more about autocracy. When did the Japanese adopt printing presses? The first that I can think of in the Islamic world in Arabic script was in 1727. There was an Italian printing press that could do Arabic script in 1500 or so, so I don't think Arabic was that big a problem. Probably the different shape of letters depending on where they are in a word is an issue, but there are only 23 (26 for Turkish and Persian) letters and many of them look the same except for the number of dots.
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
The Medieval theory of evolution was more or less commonly held at the time - it wasn't just a flash-in-the-pan theory. Islamic scientists used pretty much our scientific method and had peer review. The theory was that organisms struggling to survive in their environment develop new characteristics and pass them on to their progeny - not bad for the Dark Ages.
Actually in Islam, humans have to abide to the nature of the universe, all already set by its creator.
No I'm saying that because of this rigor they'd question any 'Origin of Species' type thought as there simple won't be the vast amount of interlocking evidence Darwin had.
Yay for thread necromancy...
That sounds quite a bit likely Lamarqian evolution, actually. Which is not bad at all (it's one step away, if you will). The way I see it, the development of the Theory of Evolution (at least, to the level of Darwin) had the following preceeding steps:
- Linne: the idea of classifying plants and animals, and assuming that a systematic (divine) order exists behind them.
- Lamarque: the idea that organisms can change (though with the fallacy that they could give their achieved properties immediately to their descendants).
- Cuvier: the idea that species can go extinct, and that there's a geological deep time (this isn't trivial at all, it's a major step - even though Cuvier otherwise, by modern standards, would be regarded as a creationist).
- Darwin: essentially reconciling Lamarque and Cuvier, via natural selection.
Well, the "Dark Ages" is a fabrication made by early modern Europe in order to distance themselves from their past, anyways,. The 'Golden Age' Islamic world (if you will, between the start of the Umayyad dynasty and the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols) did some quintessential steps in the development of the scientific method. Folks like Al-Biruni and Avicanna, anyone?
That sounds quite a bit likely Lamarqian evolution, actually. Which is not bad at all (it's one step away, if you will). The way I see it, the development of the Theory of Evolution (at least, to the level of Darwin) had the following preceeding steps:
- Linne: the idea of classifying plants and animals, and assuming that a systematic (divine) order exists behind them.
- Lamarque: the idea that organisms can change (though with the fallacy that they could give their achieved properties immediately to their descendants).
- Cuvier: the idea that species can go extinct, and that there's a geological deep time (this isn't trivial at all, it's a major step - even though Cuvier otherwise, by modern standards, would be regarded as a creationist).
- Darwin: essentially reconciling Lamarque and Cuvier, via natural selection.
Well, the "Dark Ages" is a fabrication made by early modern Europe in order to distance themselves from their past, anyways,.
The 'Golden Age' Islamic world (if you will, between the start of the Umayyad dynasty and the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols) did some quintessential steps in the development of the scientific method. Folks like Al-Biruni and Avicanna, anyone? 
Since everyone ignored this, I'll point out that that's a commonly held belief, which is wrong, IIRC. QI said so. I'm not sure if they thought it was a globe, but they definitely did not think it was flat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
Wiki even agrees.
Christopher Columbus sailing west in order to get to the east years before whatshisname (I've forgotten. Pretty sure it wasn't Galileo) suggested that the world was, indeed, round does rather suggest that it is a fallacy that the flat Earth was a widely held belief.