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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
now that all physical characteristics of an organism are represented by a chemical code on a type of molecule known as DNA. Changes to an organism's characteristics are preceded by an alteration of the DNA in the cell's nucleus. But what causes these changes? Most scientists ascribe this to pure chance, but are also aware that there is a steering takes place within the organism itself, by whereby some parts of the DNA code can influence others, for example by either stimulating or repressing changes. The mechanisms of the chemistry which take place within and around the cell nucleus are extremely complex, and it will take time before science has unraveled the whole puzzle.
From a philosophical point of view the Darwinism of the 19th century and the neo-Darwinism of the 20th are not a theory of evolution, but a theory about change in nature. The word evolution literally means “to roll out,” “to unfold” what is already there in a rolled-up or enfolded state. But Darwinism does not touch on that subject at all. Changes to characteristics are haphazardly by unsteered influences from outside. In fact they are caused by “damage” done to the existing DNA. If the new characteristics provide a competitive advantage, they win out. This is how new races, species and groups of higher order in the biological classification system are said to come into existence. Because in this way ever better characteristics supplant less perfect ones, and the form automatically becomes more perfect. This process has been given the name "evolution” but it really isn't. It is a side effect of changes of from.
Natural sciences of the 19th and 20th centuries had little eye for the intellectual accomplishments of non-occidental cultures, despite the fact that quite a few “Sacred Books of the East" - India, Persia, China - were translated by scholars like H.H. Wilson, F. Hall, K.T. Telang, and a host of workers under supervision of the German scholar Max Müller. If they paid more attention they would have been aware that many cultures the world over had been pondering the question of
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