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Sorry, but Muslim scholars did ๐๐๐ write about evolution, let alone natural selection, 1000 yrs before Darwin ...
"A Thousand 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 via @vice
"A Thousand 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 via @vice
@shayla__love 's well-meaning article seems to be premised on an equally well-meaning tweet of Prof. Higham, who takes his info from a dubious, albeit peer-reviewed, article published in a journal whose editors didn't know to whom to send it for review https://twitter.com/nyuprimatology/status/1309162680134119424
Unfortunately, the Vice and the peer-reviewed articles contain numberous misconceptions that could have been avoided if an Arabist or medievalist were consulted. Iโll focus on three that seem to be persistent on Internet but that originate in the 19th cent (more on that later)...
#1. The ๐พ๐๐ก๐ฬ๐ ๐๐-๐ปฬฃ๐๐ฆ๐๐ค๐ฬ๐ (Eng. The Book of Living Things) of al-Jฤแธฅiแบ is not a work zoology or biology. It is a literary bestiary. Jฤแธฅiแบ is a Muสฟtazilฤซ theologian and an accomplished belletrist. He wrote his แธคayawฤn 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 ๐โ๐ฆ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ข๐ and its medieval successors.
#2. The Arabo-Islamic scholars mentioned in these articles are heirs to Hellenistic tradition and ...
#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 โladder of natureโ and ...
the Neoplatonists' โChain of Beingโ, which were popular among monotheists at least as early as Philo of Alexandria (fl. 1st cent. BCE). The views of Jฤแธฅiแบ no more resemble Darwin than does, say, those of Thomas Aquinas.
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#3. The peer-reviewed article contains many howlers that a competent Arabist would spot immediately. Most egregious is the discussion of ๐๐๐ ๐โ (ุงูู
ุณุฎ), meaning โmetamorphosisโ. This idea has more to do with theology than biology...
In fact, it has a qurสพanic pedigree: the Qurสพan speaks of God punishing the wicked โ especially Jewish violators of the Sabbath โ by transforming them into baser creatures, such as apes and pigs. This has about as much to do with evolution as Kafkaโs ๐๐๐ก๐๐๐๐๐โ๐๐ ๐๐ ...
For more on this idea of maskh, I recommend Michael Cook's article, "Ibn Qutaybah and the Monkeys" https://www.jstor.org/stable/1596085
Many (strained) attempts to connect Darwinian ideas to the luminaries of classical and medieval Arabic literature derive from the fascinating story of the reception of Darwin's writings in the Arab world. On this subject, I strongly recommend: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Reading_Darwin_in_Arabic_1860_1950/3xBJAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover
Apologies for all the typos!
More detailed treatment discussion: https://twitter.com/tafsirdoctor/status/1314563684283420673
