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

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ep4ykn/a-thousand-years-before-darwin-islamic-scholars-were-writing-about-natural-selection

by omarchowdhury • 6 years ago

181 120 6 years ago

vice.com

j4nt4b• 6 years ago

So 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.

eska2• 6 years ago

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, but I think there are worlds in between.

curiousgal• 6 years ago

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".

kypro• 6 years ago

To be fair a lot of Christians do the same and explain away contradictions in the bible as being simply "metaphors".

As more people become scientifically literate hopefully it will push religions to adopt a more rational interpretation of their beliefs.

rtx• 6 years ago

Accept the evolution of man from primates.

Ancapistani2• 6 years ago

unlike Christianity, Islam accepts scientific discoveries but attributes them to God instead

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.

pvaldes4• 6 years ago

Islam accepts scientific discoveries but attributes them to God

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)

GreenHeuristics2• 6 years ago

The creator of the Big Bang theory, george lemaitre, was a roman catholic priest

artificial• 6 years ago

Interesting, are you aware that the big bang theory originated from a Belgian priest?

wait_a_minute3• 6 years ago

If you are attributing scientific discoveries to God, then that's not exactly accepting the discoveries - it's just pushing God further to the gaps. Christianity does the same thing.

jmull• 6 years ago

unlike Christianity

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...

mohaine• 6 years ago

That is completely different then what my Muslim friends from collage said they were taught. They said that at home they had classes that explained how these were "tricks" put in place by God to mislead non-believers.

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.

booleandilemma• 6 years ago

unlike Christianity, Islam accepts scientific discoveries

Ever heard of the Jesuits?

nsoonhui• 6 years ago

You must be kidding right? If not how do you explain the overwhelming rejection of evolution in countries with a majority Muslim population like Saudi Arabia [1], Turkey [0] or even "moderate" ones like Malaysia?

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...

iguy• 6 years ago

Here's a blog post laying out in detail the gulf from Darwin:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/10/07/did-arabs-come-up-...

BeetleB3• 6 years ago

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.

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).

throwaway13239• 6 years ago

Your nitpick is inaccurate, e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamic_scholars_descr...

steveridout• 6 years ago

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 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.

techbio• 6 years ago

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

ARandomerDude2• 6 years ago

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

silicon2401• 6 years ago

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.

nobody9999• 6 years ago

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...

markdog12• 6 years ago

Thought of this, too. The Durants' "History of Civilization" is incredible, as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization

ammaristotle• 6 years ago

This Twitter thread https://twitter.com/shahansean/status/1314372114946895873 seems to do a good job explaining why this Vice article contains numerous misconceptions

technotony• 6 years ago

It's not just having the theory, Darwin's contribution was collecting data to prove his theory.

ksaj2• 6 years ago

Also a framework to repeat it reliably, which is an important feature of anything we call Science.

themgt• 6 years ago

This Twitter thread[1] from a professor specializing in Islamic thought debunks these claims and links to a paper making the counterargument in more detail[2].

[1] https://twitter.com/shahanSean/status/1314372114946895873

[2] https://www.academia.edu/39234303/Old_Texts_New_Masks_A_Crit...

est31• 6 years ago

Readable version of your [1]: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1314372114946895873.html

ilamont• 6 years ago

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 bestiary. Jāḥiẓ is a Muʿtazilī theologian and an accomplished belletrist. He wrote his Ḥayawān a compendium of stories, anecdotes, ... maxims, and poems that organized under the rubric of animals. In terms of genre and content, it resembles, for example, the 𝑃ℎ𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑢𝑠 and its medieval successors. #2. The Arabo-Islamic scholars mentioned in these articles are heirs to Hellenistic tradition and ... its views on nature, much like the medieval scholars of Latin Christendom and Byzantium. Ideas depicted as precursors to Darwin in these articles are, in fact, a part of the reception history of Aristotelian concepts like the “ladder of nature” and ... the Neoplatonists' “Chain of Being”, which were popular among monotheists at least as early as Philo of Alexandria (fl. 1st cent. BCE). The views of Jāḥiẓ no more resemble Darwin than does, say, those of Thomas Aquinas. ... #3. The peer-reviewed article contains many howlers that a competent Arabist would spot immediately. Most egregious is the discussion of 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑘ℎ (المسخ), meaning “metamorphosis”. This idea has more to do with theology than biology...

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...

8f2ab37a-ed6c• 6 years ago

The argument in this article is not at all surprising coming from the likes of VICE, Vox, Buzzfeed and co. There's a particular narrative they seem to want to advance regardless of how well-supported their positions are.

Pfhreak• 6 years ago

There's a particular narrative they seem to want to advance...

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.

diego_moita2• 6 years ago

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 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.

goto112• 6 years ago

Charles Darwins big idea was natural selection, the mechanism by which evolution happens. It was not a new idea that species had evolved over time from common ancestors (Larmarck is well known for example), but nobody had suggested a plausible mechanism for how it worked before Darwin and Wallace.

bausano_michael• 6 years ago

The Mindscape podcast has a recent episode on this topic - Sean B. Carroll On randomness.

thaumasiotes• 6 years ago

But that misses the whole point: no other scholar was able to embed a theory of evolution into the scientific body of knowledge.

Not even Alfred Russell Wallace?

ARandomerDude2• 6 years ago

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.

beambot• 6 years ago

Darwin performed hybridization experiments that demonstrated the principles, and the topic appeared as a section in Origin of Species. However, Darwin's experiments lacked statistical rigor -- he didn't do enough variations to make statistical assertions. This gap was later adeptly filled by Mendel. Freeman Dyson did a wonderful lecture on this topic right before his passing, which covered various forms of biological & cultural evolution spanning Darwin to present:

https://www.ias.edu/news/in-the-media/freeman-dyson-biologic...

If you want an alternate source:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-019-0289-9

kadoban• 6 years ago

He formalized it as a theory that could then be tested, reviewed for internal consistency, used to model/explain the world, etc.

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).

debbiedowner• 6 years ago

He did in his book. He gives instructions for how to perform his plant hybridization experiments in your own garden.

Terr_• 6 years ago

On the subject of demonstrations-in-the-lab, there's an interesting experiment that's been tracking and sampling some E.Coli since 1988.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...

goto112• 6 years ago

He did refer to experiments which demonstrates "natural" selection in action, like pidgeon breeding.

amriksohata2• 6 years ago

Can you provide examples where he demonstrated it? I mean that would be pretty epic him able to demonstrate it happening.

dddddaviddddd• 6 years ago

I'm reading On The Origin of the Species right now. He discusses human selection of domestic animals and plants at length as a fairly convincing analogy, then connects it to observations 'in nature'. It's hard to demonstrate something that is observed (vs something controllable), but the argument is quite comprehensive.

noncoml3• 6 years ago

Or how the bible is telling the story of Eve(Mitochondrial Eve) and Adam(Y-chromosomal Adam)

jjjbokma• 6 years ago

Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam lived not in the same period of time.

peter303• 6 years ago

Aristotles Ladder of Life considers the progression of species. But without mechanism.

aborsy• 6 years ago

Mendel (widely referred to as the father of genetics) had already demonstrated it.

diego_moita2• 6 years ago

Mendel [...] had already demonstrated it.

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.

andrewjl• 6 years ago

And yet their speculation gave us the conceptual apparatus to make sense of the data that lead to the discovery. Science never operates in a vacuum.

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...

AdamN• 6 years ago

Wouldn't it be more correct to refer to Al-Jahiz as an Arab scholar? It's not like we call Darwin a Christian scholar.

GreenHeuristics2• 6 years ago

Here is Aristotle describing evolution through natural selection some 1300 years before that (in Physics book 2).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CptJLtvWcAAdIiS?format=jpg&name=...

wait_a_minute3• 6 years ago

Religions might accidentally guess the correct thing part of the time. But that would be despite the numerous examples of religions being extremely wrong most other times. Islam is no different. This feels like a massive stretch you'd expect from an apologist, not an actual scientist.

duskwuff2• 6 years ago

Or, more frequently, a religious text may contain a story or a statement which can be subjectively interpreted as representing a modern scientific truth.

wait_a_minute3• 6 years ago

Yes, but that only happens after the fact. Meaning, it's a story that gets interpreted in a way consistent with the science only after we knew about the science. Whereas beforehand, it might've been interpreted quite literally, or metaphorically but about something other than the science entirely.

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.

sfjailbird• 6 years ago

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 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...

Ccecil• 6 years ago

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.

Someone• 6 years ago

I don’t see it that way. Genesis doesn’t mention the creation of earth, stars get created after there’s land and water on earth, there’s light with days and nights before stars, the sun and moon are equally old, fruit-bearing plants are created before sea life, and water plants aren’t mentioned at all.

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.

thefounder2• 6 years ago

"Genesis" got it wrong. The knowledge from "genesis" is no different than the knowledge of so many others that got it "close" but not quite right.

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.

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

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).

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.

WealthVsSurvive• 6 years ago

We have too much hubris regarding ancient peoples and their religions. These stories and their kin across the world comprise humanity's first attempts at formalizing ergodic reasoning. They were technically incorrect, but only insomuch that they didn't have as much to work with as we do. I also think most miss the important bits about genesis, the part where our consciousness became a binary machine of good-for-me / bad-for-me projected over time (whereas before the machine merely had some limited scratch memory), how that relates to scarcity in the story of Cain and Abel, and how that really sort of mucked things up for humans as far as war and horrific things go. Genesis is primarily about the birth of human consciousness. Eve gained knowledge first, not because of some sexist nonsense, but because it's a "good" thing for women to project about the well-being of themselves and their offspring. This "good" thing however, was witnessed by men who then killed each other over achieving that "good" status. It's a story concerning the origin of all material conflict, the bridge between beast and man, and the evolutionary impetus for the development of all intelligence.

macspoofing2• 6 years ago

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.

duskwuff2• 6 years ago

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

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".

_jal• 6 years ago

It is no different than millennialist numerology games like the Branch Davidians and numerous other cultists enjoy.

The scam just works better if you don't make it quite so easy to falsify.

BeetleB3• 6 years ago

The reality is that there is quite a lot evolution denialism in the Islamic world

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).

thefounder2• 6 years ago

Well, all the religious versets regardless of the religion make sense and provide great insights in hindsight with enough "mental gymnstastics". One can find spiritual and astronomical significations even in children's books. Just watch Ancient Aliens! They are gold in this regard!

da39a3ee• 6 years ago

The actual research paper is here:

https://sci-hub.se/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10...

jobigoud2• 6 years ago

Did they follow the reasoning to the conclusion that humans and pigs have a common ancestor? Is this accepted by modern Islam?

omarchowdhury• 6 years ago

Human and pigs have a common creator according to the Islamic view. Even via observation, we can see that humans and pigs are similar in that they both need to eat, breathe, sleep, excrete. Both have eyes, lungs, hearts, brains... Is there a loss of dignity or some sort of implied conflation because of shared properties?

What's your intention behind this question?

jobigoud2• 6 years ago

No I was talking about a common ancestor, not creator, since the article is about evolution by natural selection and speciation.

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.

awinter-py• 6 years ago

georges cuvier got fossil specimens as well as theories of their origins from native americans

which isn't to say this came with a theory of natural selection

JoeAltmaier2• 6 years ago

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.

skim_milk• 6 years ago

When a person gives nature human-like qualities it always seems to upset some people. Consider that the people that are most concerned at our poor treatment of environment probably do so in part because they see nature as an extension of themselves and give nature human-like emotions despite knowing it's definitely not "real".

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.

JoeAltmaier2• 6 years ago

Sure, but scientists? They should know better.

Anyway, you want to understand selection, it's not helping.

koreanguy• 6 years ago

1000 years ago Islam didn't exist

amriksohata2• 6 years ago

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921-600-why-darw...

yters• 6 years ago

2000 years before Darwin the presocratics were proposing evolution. 'Islamic' scholars where merely conquered philosophers continuing the Greek research.

asadlionpk• 6 years ago

It's sad to see open hatred towards Islam (and religion in general) on my favorite Hacker forum.

Nitpicking any theory in support of God's existence and not even consider any findings/research/point of view.

Isn't this plain ignorance?

ibn_khaldun• 6 years ago

I find this article to be questionable, if not outright misleading and incongruent to the creed of Islam. For one, the quote from Ibn Khaldun (the only reputable individual mentioned, albeit briefly in this piece) is taken out of context and mistranslated.[1] Evidence suggests that what Ibn Khaldun was in fact making reference to (the concept of the celestial spheres/emanation) is antithetical to the theory of evolution or anything of its ilk. In fact, the passages that precede the quote that is referenced in this piece and others establish this evidence as clear. [2, pg. 137]

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

eddhead• 6 years ago

Yep, it's typical clickbaity fake news from Vice

https://www.academia.edu/39234303/Old_Texts_New_Masks_A_Crit...

reactspa• 6 years ago

"She refused to accept the scientific theory until she learned that a proponent of the scientific theory was a Muslim like herself."

RIP Science.

Venkatesh10• 6 years ago

Well Thousands of years before both Islamic scholars and Darwin, Evolution was beautiful described in Hinduism called "Dashavatharam".

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.

guru4consulting• 6 years ago

not sure why you were down voted. Vedas have their own share of BS, but they do deserve credits for some serious scientific thought process. As per Dashavatharam, God is initially fish, then turtle, boar, lion-human and the remaining incarnations are human. This kind of resembles evolutionary process starting with fish, followed by amphibian, mammal and finally human. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashavatara

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.

smusamashah• 6 years ago

Being a Muslim this is very exciting read. I didn't know Muslims from that time were able to reach these conclusions at all. It's amazing.

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.

zbq• 6 years ago

If this surprises you, you’re going to be shocked about Gutenberg, Columbus, and Benjamin Franklin.

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

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