From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish republic: Biology as politics and philosophy (1908-1938)

Abstract

This dissertation is about the reception of the theory of evolution from the late Ottoman Empire to the Early Republican Turkey. It argues that the history of this hotly debated theory in Turkey was related with the attempts to interpret organisms by benefiting from scientific findings. As the secular way of think-ing increased in the Ottoman Empire, interpreting organisms without refer-ence to divine will became gradually entrenched among the Ottoman intelli-gentsia. There was a strong relationship between the development of secularism and the rise of evolutionary theory in the Ottoman Empire. Many Ottoman intellectuals used Darwin and Lamarck to explain the origins of hu-mankind and their nature. Modern Turkey inherited certain aspects of the Ot-toman intellectual realm, and consequently the idea of scientism and secular-ism gained an enormous momentum. The political orientation of the early Republican regime influenced its reception directly. The rise of a secular his-tory and physical anthropology paved the way for the promotion and popu-larization of Darwin and the idea of biological evolution crystallized in these scientific fields. This dissertation pays a particular attention to the rise of anti-Darwinism in the late period of the Ottoman Empire and places it into an anti-materialist context. It emphasizes that the main motivation behind anti-Darwinist senti-ments were religious and social concerns, rather than scientific ones.