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SUMMARY:Decolonising history of evolutionary biology: a perspective from 1
 9th-century India - Sarah Qidwai (University of Toronto)
DTSTART:20200203T130000Z
DTEND:20200203T140000Z
UID:TALK137533@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jules Skotnes-Brown
DESCRIPTION:In an 1896 article in the Urdu journal _Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq_\, ti
 tled 'Adna Halat se Aala Halat par Insaan ki Taraqqi' ('The Stages of Huma
 n Development from an Inferior to Superior State')\, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan
  (1817–1898) wrote\, 'the monkeys that exist today\, orangutans and apes
 \, are quite similar to humans in many ways. Darwin claims that middle cha
 ins are missing or extinct\, but even if we found them\, they would only p
 rove similarities among kinds.' Here\, Sayyid Ahmad refers to the English 
 naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882)\, not to discredit or defend Darwi
 n's theory of evolution\, but to support Sayyid Ahmad's own position on th
 e topic\, outlined in 'Adna Halat'\, that humans evolved over time from a 
 common animal ancestor and this process is guided by a divine creator.\n\n
 This talk examines questions related to Sayyid Ahmad's views on human evol
 ution and its broader implications related to historians of biology. What 
 is left out when historians use a term such as 'Darwinism' to represent th
 e history of evolutionary biology? Does it create a Eurocentric narrative 
 of evolutionary thought focused on a specific area? I will argue that Sayy
 id Ahmad's views on human evolution are not only important in how we write
  about the history of evolutionary biology\, but also of the theories of h
 uman development from a non-Eurocentric perspective\, in this case a Musli
 m in 19th-century India.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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