[ilamont]

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...

[Ericson2314]

I mean as late as Newton and Euler the division between theology and science was still mushy?

Everything here makes sense, but hardly seems like a refutation to me.

[macspoofing]

>I mean as late as Newton and Euler the division between theology and science was still mushy?

All the more reason to be very careful in interpreting those writings and mapping them to modern scientific notions.

[Ericson2314]

Sure, but at the same time, we should ask what more we could expect?

Remember the division between pure and applied research is also new. And most things that have a "definitive" old date of discover need an proof (if math) or application to solidify their claim.

Evolution isn't really practical knowledge --- artificial selection predates recorded history so what is left to do before genetics or the ability to observation fast-reproducing microorganisms? I'd say evolution was doomed to be at best re-hypothesized again and again until the 19th century, with nothing to make it stick as part of the culture.

I guess one could dig up fossils, but that sort of traveling and exploring for fun didn't become popular until 19th century provided the vast empires, elite leisure time, and disdain for the empire's current inhabitants that made digging up bones appealing.

There's something very 19th western about traveling around and thinking about natural, not just human, history. Witness how new plate tectonics and geology is too. Perhaps industrial-scale mining was an important vector for getting digging to be part of the culture.

Ibn Battuta, Islamic traveler extrordinaire, checks some of those boxes but not all, and lived after the Islamic Golden age. He commented on pyramids but not fossils.

[vmception]

ha cool I'm reading/typing Metamorphosis on typelit.io right now