Earlier Theories of Evolution

General Mung Beans

Banned
What if one of the following had developed a theory of evolution before Darwin?

1. The ancient Chinese develop a theory of evolution.

2. Islamic civilizations develop a theory of evolution.

3. A Greek or Roman develop a theory of evolution.

What would be indvidual effects for each civilization?
 

jycee

We would not have to deal with all the creationist nonsense today. Although maybe the heliocentric - earth centric debate would still be going on. Not sure which one I'd rather be living with.
 

Mark E.

General Mung Beans said:
What if one of the following had developed a theory of evolution before Darwin?

1. The ancient Chinese develop a theory of evolution.

2. Islamic civilizations develop a theory of evolution.

3. A Greek or Roman develop a theory of evolution.

What would be indvidual effects for each civilization?
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1. China - Good chance for the theory to propagate, since the proprietary religions of China would not present a serious conflict.

2. Islamic - Highly unlikely since the arid regions dominated by Islam do not offer a wide ground of observation. Islam would need to become seafaring. Since the Judeo-Christian account of creation was so much older, there would be serious conflicts.

3. Greece/Rome - Perhaps a chance for the emerging Christian faith to be established in an environment where evolution does not become entrenched as an enemy of he faith. But unfortunately, Roman science was very much applied as opposed to theoretical and thought-provoking.
 

MerryPrankster

The Greco-Roman cosmology was somewhat evolutionary--the gods descended from previous generations of gods.

No biological evolution that I can recall, though.
 

dreadnought jenkins

Mark E. said:
3. Greece/Rome - Perhaps a chance for the emerging Christian faith to be established in an environment where evolution does not become entrenched as an enemy of he faith. But unfortunately, Roman science was very much applied as opposed to theoretical and thought-provoking.
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And Greek science was far more philosophical than observational.

Really, only hope is China, and have it spread to the rest of the world.
 

carlton_bach

The Presocratics could do it actually, given their love for all kinds of explanatory systems to natural phenomena. You'd need for one of them to take a closer interest in animals, though, and observe that species are changeable. The problem here is that at that time, the prevailing opinion was that species were interfertile under some circumstances, and thus mutations and selective breeding isn't a problem to explain. Once the idea of species boundaries becomes canon, you could have the idea of evolution, but by then the Presocratics are long dead and most philosophers are into 'natural order' and Platonic ideas.

Medieval Islam stands a decent chance. Look e.g. at ibn Khaldun's ideas about the development of human societies. By that time, the idea of species was already more refined and it was accepted for gentlemen to take an interest in agriculture and animal husbandry. You could easily have a keen mind come up with the idea of natural selective breeding to explain why wild asses look different in different parts of the world.

I can't see too much of an impact, though.
 

Fiji

Mark E. said:
2. Islamic - Highly unlikely since the arid regions dominated by Islam do not offer a wide ground of observation. Islam would need to become seafaring. Since the Judeo-Christian account of creation was so much older, there would be serious conflicts.
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Islam WAS pretty seafaring, if memory serves ... East Africa and India and all that. Indeed, if Islam stays relatively liberal and open to new ideas just a bit longer, they're our best shot.

Still, this doesn't assure the knowledge will survive.
 

carlton_bach

FallenMorgan said:
Isn't that mostly because of melanin, weight, etc?
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Pretty much, AFAIK. But they're interfertile, they are a good object for obseration and they are sometghing that an Islamic scientist would conceivably study without a world-spanning project of species classification given the economic importance of asses. My thinking would be a scholar writing on animals, maybe livestock, and he is just now thinking of how breeders carefully produce new varieties of horse and mule, and then he thinks of the different kinds of wild asses and starts wondering whether nature might not be doing the same thing. hios mind wanders to zebras and horses and he develops the idea of 'natural selective breeding' in which the best suited males get to have all the offspring and the same animal population will change in response to different climatic conditions. And then he throws in a paragraph about human populations and how it is all ordered for the best that the Africans are black and the Franks are hulking brutes, but the most suitable lands for humans produices the best-balanced populations - Arabs, Romans, Indians and Chinese.

The work becomes a classic, the meme spreads and eventually, zoologists start using it to interpret phenomena. Someone suggests that populations can diverge into non-interfertile species, say using the examples of horse and ass or horse and zebra. Then you have it.
 

Emperor Qianlong

Well, I'd say, it's entirely possible in the Islamic world (at least if we're talking about the 'Golden Age' - Abbasid Empire, prior the Mongol sacking of Baghdad). The Arabs were pretty seafaring in the Indian Ocean, and one place where ideas about evolution might have arisen would be Madagascar, which was also visited by the Arabs (and the local giant ostrich-like bird Aepyornis titan was probably the inspiration for the Rokh). Madagascar would have offered a great ground for observation, especially in comparison with the radically different fauna of mainland Africa. Also, the Arabs already possessed crude forerunners of the scientific method, so this might have worked out. Of course, given the Islamic context, this likely would have been applied only to plants and animals, explicitly excluding humans - but it's the distribution of the idea of evolution alone that matters.

In regard for the Greeks or the Chinese, I'm doubtful.
 
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