Towards An Islamic Critique of Anthropological Evolutionism

Abstract

I. THE BIOLOGY-CULTURE CONNECTION IN THE HISTORY
OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT
The story of modem anthropology is a story of the Euro-American attempt
to discover the other than Euro-American human being. Within that
story is the story of the intellectual self-discovery of the Euro-American;
within that is the story of the discovery of racism; within that is the story
of political and ideological pressures on the processes of such discoveries;
within that the amazing and wonderful story of the scientific discovery of
the worldly nature of the human being - conceptualized generally: across
all space and time, all colors and languages; and within that story is a story
of the social and natural sciences: of their methods, results, potentialities,
and pitfalls.
If there is a central theme that runs through all these stories within the
story, it is the story of the impact of Darwinian and post-Darwinian biology
on the social and human sciences. Modem anthropology is not much more
than an evolutionist form of humanism. Evolutionism is to be found in most
types of contemporary anthropological studies, as a central position or an
implicit assumption. It is clearly axiomatic to thought, analysis, and interpretation
in the discipline. As such it is a fundamental issue in the consideration
of modem anthropology for inclusion in, and recasting for, Islamic educational
purposes. The aim of this presentation is to consider briefly how the
impact of Darwin, and of biology after Darwin, on recent anthropological
thought may be measured as a step toward developing an Islamic methodology
for anthropological research and teaching.
Since its publication in 1859 by Charles Darwin (and Alfred Russell),
evolutionary theory has been refined and developed by virturally all life science
disciplines and a few other disciplines such as anthropology. Anthropdogy
is rooted partly in the life sciences and partly in the social sciences. Human
evolutionary theory developed by anthropologists has gained wide acceptance
in all sectors of the Western scientific establishment. Adherence to, and propagation
of, an evolutionist world-view has become a symbol of the liberalist
mission of Western science in the face of periodic opposition to it coming
from conservative, evangelist, Christian fundamentalists, and politicians who
represent them. A few of the anti-evolutionists are also scientists (Williams,
1983). They have given leadership to the most recent form of antievolutionism,
called scientific creationism. Within the scientific and educational
community their view is at present a minority view; the dominant view
being the pro-evolutionary one. Among the Judeo-Christian population at
large, in the United States, surveys indicate that about half of the people give
credence to the evolutionary view. The others either do not or do not care.
An effect of post-Darwinian natural science on social science was to bring
human evolution into focus as incorporating psychological, social, and cultural
aspects in addition to the biological (see e.g. in Eiseley, 1958; Freeman, 1974;
Harris, 1968; Opler, 1964; Reed, 1961; Stocking, 1968). The historical relationship
of bio-evolutionary theory to the social sciences in general and
specifically to anthropology, is complex. Nowadays it is one of the dependence
of the latter on the former. It has been argued, however, that in its formative
years, Darwinian evolutionary theory was in fact an application of social
science concepts to biology. Darwin himself acknowledged that the Malthusian
statement of the principle that human population, when unchecked, increases
in geometrical ratio while subsistence increases only in arithmetical
ratio, influenced his idea of natural selection. The subsequent acceptance of
Mendelian genetics, on which the modem form of evolutionism rests, quickly
transformed even the fundamental social science principles of the study of
human races and variation. The continuing success of the biological sciences ...