Full Description
This volume brings together diverse Asian religious perspectives to address critical issues in the encounter between tradition and modern western evolutionary thought. Such thought encompasses the biological theories of Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Earnest Haeckel, Thomas Huxley, and later "neo-Darwinians," as well as the more sociological evolutionary theories of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Henri Bergson. The essays in this volume cover responses from Hindu, Jain, Buddhist (Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Tibetan), Confucian, Daoist, and Muslim traditions. These responses come from the decades immediately after publication of The Origin of Species up to the present, with attention being paid to earlier perspectives and teachings within a tradition that have affected responses to Darwinism and western evolutionary thought in general.
The book focuses on three critical issues: the struggle for survival and the moral implications readinto it; genetic variation and its seeming randomness as related to the problems of meaning and purpose; and the nature of humankind and human exceptionalism. Each essay deals with one or more of the three issues within the context of a specific tradition.
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Global Darwinism in Asian Cultural, Historical, and Religious Contexts (C. Mackenzie Brown).- Part 1. Islamic Responses.- Chapter 2. The Politics of Islamic Opposition to Evolution in Turkey (Taner Edis).- Chapter 3. South Asian Muslim Responses to Darwinism (Martin Riexinger).- Chapter 4. Islamic Responses to Darwinism in the Persianate World (Kamran Arjomand).- Part 2. South Asia: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Responses.- Chapter 5. Karmic versus Organic Evolution: The Hindu Encounter with Modern Evolutionary Science (C. Mackenzie Brown).- Chapter 6. The Hindu Evolutionary Heritage and Hindu Criticism of Darwinism (Dermot Killingley).- Chapter 7. Sri Aurobindo's Theory of Spiritual Evolution (Peter Heehs).- Chapter 8. Jainism and Darwin: Evolution Beyond Orthodoxy (Brianne Donaldson).- Chapter 9. Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Responses to Darwinism (Roger R. Jackson).- Part 3.- East Asian Responses.- Chapter 10. Progress and Purposiveness in Chinese Philosophies: A Darwinian Critique (Nicholas S. Brasovan).- Chapter 11. Yan Fu's Xunzian-Confucian Translation of Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics (Kuan-yen Liu).- Chapter 12. Yan Fu's Daoist Reinterpretation of Evolutionism (Kuan-yen Liu).- Chapter 13. Dependent Co-Evolution: Kropotkin's Theory of Mutual Aid and Its Appropriation by Chinese Buddhists (Justin Ritzinger).- Chapter 14. Japanese Responses to Evolutionary Theory, with Particular Focus on Nichiren Buddhists (Yulia Burenina).
