Evolution and Avatar

Sometimes one gets to receive mail tinged with patriotic fervor during what can be called for lack of better term "season of national euphoria". This is usually around Independence Day and republic day.
While it deals with usual speech about how "India has never invaded other countries in last 1000 years", sometimes there are others interesting assertions.One such assertion is that Hindu scriptures describe "Theory of evolution". This I am afraid is incorrect, even more than that it confuses the subject.

The theory of evolution is correlated with Dash avatar, one of the most abiding example of the concept of Avatar.

Dash avatar describes the ten avatars of Bhagwaan Vishnu from Matsya(Fish) to Kalki , from what I remember (very hazily ) the avatars are supposed to be in ascending order of gunas(or kalas) . This means that Bhagwaan Ram has more gunas then Matsya and Kalki will have more gunas than Ram, the perfect avatar having 64 gunas (as far as I remember Kalki is supposed to have around 30 gunas).

The progression from first to last avatar loosely mirrors the stages of evolution from aquatic to human through amphibious, mammal and primate.This is a striking coincidence and has led many well intentioned Hindus to proclaim that ancients knew about theory of evolution.

I don't think it was a case like that. The similarity between incarnation and evolution can be explained by the similarity in thinking process. To wit, to the ancients striving towards making sense of life, the complication of progressive life- forms presented an elegant solution, to be precise that of gradual evolution of life - form from simple to complicated. Later it might have become embellished with concept of Avatar.

But isn't it a contradiction here? On one hand I am saying that Avatar is not theory of evolution and yet speculating that ancients had some sense of evolution.

It is not, for the reason when ancients posited the idea of Avatar; it was at best a hypothesis, a philosophical model to explain life, an intellectual curiosity. Interestingly I have read that there were other cultures, with naturalistic view point (but of course) who had similar myths. This is understandable, given that an organic religion will tend to derive explanations from nature.

But after all even theory of evolution is just a theory! And here the common place error occurs.
The evolution as imagined by ancients was a hypothesis, insightful yet unverified, it was an intelligent speculation based on every day observation.

Theory of Evolution as proposed by Darwin and even Lamarck goes beyond mere speculation. Theory of evolution is based on rigorous empirical science. It is a work of centuries of observations of nature in various fields.

Data was collected and validated in countless ways before it became an acceptable theory. In short theory of evolution is a result of painstaking effort. Therefore it is incorrect to confuse the two. It doesn't mean that the thinking of ancient is trivial or something to be laughed at, it only means we should try to appreciate the intellectual effort of our forefathers in its own context.
The other moral is that we should learn to appreciate power of empirical science

Categories : Science , India , Hinduism , Religion