Opinion Letters

摘要

Michael Brooks asks whether children raised in isolation would invent a religion (7 February, p 30). They might: but without knowledge of the Prophet, they would not reinvent Islam; without knowledge of Jesus, they would not reinvent Christianity; and without knowledge of Abraham and Moses they could not reinvent Judaism.rnBy contrast, given sufficient time, their descendants would rediscover evolution through natural selection, without knowledge of Darwin. Newtonian dynamics does not require knowledge of Newton; and relativity could be rediscovered without knowledge of Einstein.