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This critique is great (and obviously necessary), but there's a broader perspective that may be relevant to understanding what's going on. https://twitter.com/shahanSean/status/1314372114946895873
Firstly, the timing of @shahanSean's thread is uncanny! There was a great paper at MESA yesterday by Tyler Nighswander (a dual-PhD student in NELC & Bioanthropology) on the Great Chain of Being in medieval Islamic philosophy and its modern Muslim appropriations.
Nighswander points out an interesting development: following Marwa Elshakry's groundbreaking book, he notes how the Chain of Being was the basis for some of the 19th c. Arab (both Christian and Muslim) rejections of Darwinism, but has now become a way to appropriate evolution!
I was talking to my SO about all this, and she remarked that we do also have to keep in mind the role of "Chain of Being" ideas among earlier scientists themselves. So this thread is partly inspired by our conversations.
Let's turn to the VICE article: that headline is quite ridiculous, and a reminder that clickbait-journalism is a major culprit here. In fact, I was too turned of by it to even click through, until this morning.
The article is admittedly a bit more nuanced than the headline suggests, e.g. by using such language as "evolution-like ideas" and noting that the older ideas discussed are obviously not Darwinian.
One point in particular from the article: "Until now, the history of scholarship from other cultures has largely been regarded more as philosophical or religious in nature, Diogo said, rather than scientific."
It's a truism, of course, but explains the context of this debate.
It's a truism, of course, but explains the context of this debate.
The argument reflects a contention in the field of History of Science, which shows how a common perception of the rise of modern science is often anachronistic, thus labeling those we now approve as "scientists" and all those we don't as just something else.
But this kind of retroactive appropriation of earlier "scientists" (typically seen as revolutionary figures who defy any context) often overlooks the intellectual traditions of their own time, and the complex of factors that would've shaped their thought and scientific work.
Certainly, al-Jahiz was a belletrist and theologian rather than a "biologist," but how justified or even relevant is this retroactive disciplinary distinction? Many early modern scientists were also more theologian than we tend to think. https://twitter.com/shahanSean/status/1314372119799758849
Like it or not, Isaac Newton was a theologian. Quote: "His polished writings on theology were not the musings of a dilettante but were the products of a committed, brilliant and courageous analyst . . . religion was central to Newton’s life." http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/contexts/CNTX00001
In other words, while rightly pointing out the genre and context of medieval writings such as by al-Jahiz, we also have to ask: what was the literary context/tradition in which, for instance, Galileo wrote?
Two important points in this tweet below. Medieval Islamic thought must not be seen in isolation, without attention to its Hellenistic background or its contemporaneous Byzantine and Latin traditions. This is often missed in "Golden Age" discourses. https://twitter.com/shahanSean/status/1314372123557867521
But, secondly, also implicit here is the need precisely to relate the reception history of Aristotelian ideas like the scala naturae ("ladder of nature") to the broader context in which Darwin emerged, including his precursors and antagonists.
Basically: where does scala naturae fit in the history of Darwinian thought? It seems to be a part of the story as told for instance in this Evolution Biology course taught at Brown: http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BIO48/2.History&Evidence.HTML (or this course at Columbia: http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/courses/v1001/evol.html)
It seems, then, that the effort by some to introduce al-Jahiz, Biruni, et al into a broader story of evolutionary ideas is informed by the existing curriculum, as a way to expand the history of science beyond the West.
So, if the history of science tells a story about evolutionary thought that takes into account ancient ideas like scala naturae, then should we move the goalpost only when the narrative is also made to include medieval Arabic reception of those same ideas?
As such, perhaps the advocates of this particular kind of curricular reform (e.g. Hameed, as named in the article) and their critics (e.g. Christakis, also named in the article) are talking past each other.
