Darwin Through a Cultural Lens

cover_natureFrom Salman Hameed of Irtiqa:

A couple of weeks ago, Nature had an excellent editorial that urges scientists and policy-makers to frame their arguments in a way that takes people’s value system and cultural lens into account when communicating ideas like evolution. This is not something completely new. Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney wrote about “framing science” a few years ago. However, this Nature editorial uses historical cases from other cultures to provide support for the argument, and the journal plans to publish a series of articles over the coming month that will cover the international reception of Darwin’s ideas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Here is the bit about framing:

The lesson for today’s scientists and policy-makers is simple: they cannot assume that a public presented with “the facts” will come to the same conclusion as themselves. They must take value systems, cultural backdrops, and local knowledge gaps into account and frame their arguments accordingly. Such approaches will be crucial in facing current global challenges, from recessions to pandemics and climate change. These issues will be perceived and dealt with differently by different nations—not because they misunderstand, but because their understanding is in part locally dependent.

I think this is a crucial point. Also, remember that this framing is a supplement to—not a replacement of—factual information. For the Muslim world, where religion plays an enormous role in societies, it would be prudent (actually necessary) to highlight that evolution does not equal atheism and that there are a number of evolutionary biologists who are also practicing Muslims. This approach is not much different than the one adopted by the National Center for Science Education, which, with Muslim examples, should resonate with Muslims as well.

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  1. Tahseen says:

    There has come up a new book entitled “Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Amazing New Insights from Qur’an in the Light of its Own True Nature.” It quotes extensively from Qur’an to prove in an extremely amazing and convincing idiom that biological evolution isn’t at all at variance with the true teachings of the Qur’an. The book even goes a step further to show that this sort of evolution is pervading not only terrestrially but on a universal scale too. It shall potentially have wide ramifications in both the Islamic as well as the scientific circles alike. The book is available online at: http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=11309

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