Complex Interplay of Islam and Science

摘要

Marwa Elshakry's Reading Darwin in Arabic is not so much about Darwin in Arabic as it is about reading the Arabic intellectual life of the late 19th and early 20th centuries through Darwin. But, above all, the book is about words, about historical semantics. It will come as no surprise to those familiar with Elshakry's previous work that she offers exceptionally nuanced readings of key concepts such as science, progress, materialism, evolution, socialism, education, nation, and the common good in Arabic. She uses words to cut through many preconceptions about Islam and modernity, most notably the very idea that science and Islam were two separate domains of meaning.