CHAPTER 19 Ordering the World 第19章 分类世界

CHAPTER 19 Ordering the World 第19章 分类世界

Our planet is home to a bewildering variety of plants and animals. We still don't know exactly how many insects or sea creatures there are. We rightly worry that the human race is reducing their number. ‘Endangered species’, such as giant pandas and Indian tigers, are in the news almost every day. For us as concerned human beings, the important word in 'endangered species' is endangered, but for scientists, an equally significant word is species. How do we know that the giant panda is not the same kind of animal as the grizzly bear, or the wildcat different from the pet cat we stroke?

我们的行星是很多动植物的家园，其种类繁多令人眼花缭乱，我们仍然没有确切知道有多少种昆虫或海洋生物，我们正恰当的担心人类正在削减其数目。“濒危物种”，比如大熊猫和印度虎，几乎每天都在新闻中出现。因为我们作为关切的人类，“濒危物种”这个词对于我们来说重要的是“濒危”，而对于科学家来说，同样重要的词还有“物种”。我们怎么知道大熊猫与灰熊不是同一类动物，或者野猫和宠物猫是不一样的？

Adam, in the Bible's Book of Genesis, is given the job of naming the plants and animals in the Garden of Eden. All human groups have some way of organizing the living world around them. All languages have names for the plants and animals people use, whether they are cultivated, gathered or provide transport, meat, hides or milk.

圣经创世纪中的亚当，被赋予的工作就是为伊甸园中的动植物取名字。所有人类群体都有一些组织他们周围世界的方法。所有的语言中都有动物和植物的名字，不论是否驯化，是否群居，是否提供运输工具、肉、皮或奶。

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European explorers began to bring back many new kinds of plants and animals from exotic parts of the world: from North and South America, Africa, Asia, and then Australia and New Zealand, as well as islands in the world's oceans. Many of these new creatures were wonderfully different from the familiar plants and animals of the Old World, but when they were closely examined, a lot of them were not all that different. For example, elephants found in India and Africa were so similar that the same name seemed appropriate. Yet, there were small differences. How should we account for these slight differences, and for the rich variety of nature?

在17、18世纪中，欧洲探险家从世界各地带回了很多新的植物和动物品种，包括北美，南美，非洲，亚洲，然后是澳大利亚，新西兰，还有世界各大洋的岛屿。许多这些新生物和熟悉的老世界的动植物非常不同，但仔细观察后就会发现，其实很多差异并不是那么大。比如，印度和非洲的大象非常接近，取相同的名字应该比较合适。但是，还是有细小的区别。我们怎么对这些细微的差别做出解释，怎么对大自然的多样性做出解释？

From Antiquity, there had been two basic answers to this question. One was to assume that nature was so bountiful that it was not surprising that many, many new kinds of plants and animals were being found in remote parts of the world. These new discoveries were thought to be simply filling the gaps in what naturalists called the 'Great Chain of Being', an idea we met way back in Chapter 5.Those who believed in the Chain of Being argued that God was so powerful that he created every creature that could possibly exist. They weren't surprised to find animals that combined characteristics of other animals, like whales and dolphins in the oceans, which looked like fish, but breathed and gave birth like land animals; or bats, which looked like birds in that they had wings and flew, but didn't lay eggs. This was because these naturalists thought all the curious aspects of plant and animal life could be explained as being part of the Chain of Being. The idea of the 'missing link' in this chain, which you might have heard about when an important new fossil is found, has been around for a long time.

从古时候起，就这个问题就有两个基本的答案。一个是假设大自然太丰饶了，在世界的偏远角落发现众多新种类的动植物并不让人吃惊。这些新的发现被认为只是填补了博物学家称之为“伟大的存在之链”的空白，第5章中我们见到过这个概念。相信存在之链的人认为上帝太强大了，创造了所有可能存在的生物。他们对于发现动物有其他动物的特性并不吃惊，比如鲸鱼和海豚都生活在海里，看起来很像鱼，但它们像陆地动物一样呼吸和生产；又或者蝙蝠，看起来很像鸟，有翅膀也可以飞，但却不下蛋。这是因为博物学家认为所有动植物的奇怪部分都可以解释成存在之链的一部分。存在之链的缺失连接的概念已经提出了很长时间，在发现新的重要化石的时候你可能听说过。

The second answer was to assume that God originally created each kind of plant and animal, and that the vast variety of nature we can see around us is the result of generation after generation producing their young. Oak trees produce saplings from their acorns, just as cats give birth to kittens, which grow up to have more kittens, and so on. And with each generation, or hundreds of generations, or thousands, the trees and cats would become more diverse. That is, the vast variety of nature was to be understood as being caused by changes that happened over time, though each plant or animal could still be said to relate to an original design. To map out all of the original plants and animals would display God's plan, as a ‘tree of life’.

第二个答案是假设上帝原本创造了每种动植物，我们所看到的周围自然的众多种类是由一代一代生产幼崽的结果。橡树通过橡子产生幼苗，就像猫生产小猫一样，小猫长大又生出更多小猫，等等。在每一代中，或者数百代中，或者数千代中，大树或者猫都会变得多种多样。也就是说，自然的多样性可以理解为由时间产生的变化而产生的，但每个动植物都与原来的设计相联系。为所有上帝计划的初生代动植物分类画图，就会成为生命之树。

During the eighteenth century, two naturalists dominated thinking on these issues, and they happened to reflect these two differing approaches. The first was a French nobleman, the Comte de Buffon (1707-88). Georges-Louis Leclerc, a rich man, devoted his life to science. He spent part of the year on his estate and the other part in Paris, where he was in charge of the king's gardens - these were much like a zoo or wildlife park today. Early on, he was a great admirer of Newton and his physics and mathematics, but most of his long life was spent investigating the natural world. His aim was to describe the earth and all the plants and animals on it. All his careful research was collected in a massive work of 127 volumes, called simply Histoire naturelle ('Natural history'). At that time, 'history' also meant ‘description’, and in these books Buffon set out to describe all the animals (and a few plants) that he could get hold of.

在18世纪时，两位博物学家在这方面的思想成为了主流，他们恰巧反应了两种不同的方法。第一个是一位法国贵族，Comte de Buffon (1707-88)。作为一名富人，Georges-Louis Leclerc将终生献给了科学。他一部分时间住在自己的房子里，其他时间住在巴黎，在那里他负责皇帝的花园，就像今天的动物园或野生动物园。早期的时候，他尊崇牛顿，包括他的物理和数学，但他大部分生命都在调查自然世界。他的目标是调查地球，以及其中所有的动植物。他所有小心的工作都收录在127卷本的鸿篇巨制中，名称是简单的《自然历史》。在他那个时代，历史也是“描述”的意思，在这些书中Buffon开始描述他能得到的所有动物（以及一部分植物）。

Buffon described nearly everything he could about his animals: their anatomy, the way they moved, what they ate, how they reproduced, what uses they were to us, and much else besides. It was a wonderfully modern attempt to see animals in their environment as far as possible. In one volume after another, he examined many of the known mammals, birds, fishes and reptiles. This massive work came out over about forty years, from 1749, and readers eagerly awaited each new volume. They were translated into most European languages.

Buffon描述了他的动物的几乎所有方面：它们的骨骼，它们运动的方式，它们吃的东西，它们怎样繁殖，对人类来说有什么用，以及其他很多东西。尽可能远的看到动物在它们的环境中是个美好的现代愿望（？？）。在一卷又一卷书中，他检查了所有的哺乳动物、鸟类、鱼类和爬行动物。这部鸿篇巨制在40年后，从1749年逐渐出版，读者迫不及待的想看到新的卷本，几乎被翻译成了所有的欧洲语言。

Buffon was fascinated by all the characteristics of each animal he examined. As he famously said, ‘Nature knows only the individual’, meaning that there was no order in nature, only a lot of individual plants and animals. It was only humans who tried to classify them into groups, for their own use. Of the Great Chain of Being, he said that nature was very full but it could only be studied one creature at a time.

Buffon着迷于他所研究的每只动物的特质。他说过一句著名的话，“自然只知道个体”，意思是自然中没有秩序，只有个体的动物和植物。只是人类努力将其分门别类，以为自用。“伟大的存在之链”，他说自然充满了各种动植物，但每次只能研究一个生物。

Buffon's great rival was the Swedish doctor and naturalist, Carl Linnaeus (1707-78). Linnaeus learned medicine but his real passion was plants. He spent most of his life as a professor at the University of Uppsala, in northern Sweden. Here he maintained a botanical garden, and sent many students all over the world to collect plants and animals for him. Some of his students died on their travels, but his followers remained devoted to Linnaeus's great goal: to name accurately all the things that exist on earth. To help with his naming, Linnaeus classified them, that is, he defined their essential characteristics. This allowed him to place them within the ‘order of nature’. When he was still in his twenties, in 1735, he produced a short book called Systema Naturae ('The system of nature'). The book was basically a long list of all the known species of plants and animals, grouped by genera. He published twelve editions in his lifetime, each time expanding his list as he learned about more kinds of plants and animals, especially those that his students discovered for him in America, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world.

Buffon最大的竞争者是瑞典医生、博物学家，Carl Linnaeus (1707-78)。Linnaeus学习了医学，但他还是对植物感到真正的热情。他一生的大部分时间都是瑞典北部Uppsala大学的教授，在这里他维护一个植物园，他派学生满世界去为他收集动植物，有的学生甚至死在旅途中，但他的追随者仍然为Linnaeus的伟大目标做出贡献：为地球上存在的所有事物精确命名。为了帮助命名，Linnaeus对其进行了分类，也就是为事物的基本特征做出定义，这使他以自然秩序为众事物排序。1735年，当他仍在二十多岁的时候，他写了一本小书名叫《自然的系统》。这本书基本上就是所有已知动植物物种的长长的列表，并以属进行分类。他一生中出版了十二版，每次知道了更多的动植物种类，都对列表进行了扩充，尤其是他的学生发现了美洲、亚洲、非洲以及世界其他部分的动植物后。

Since the ancient Greeks, naturalists had asked whether there could be a 'natural' classification of the things in the world. Do things have a timeless or God-given relationship to each other? And if so, how can we find it out? In the Christian era, the most common assumption was that God had created each species of plant and animal 'in the beginning', for Adam to name, and that what we see now was the product of time and chance.

自从古希腊开始，博物学家就寻找世界上的事物是否有一个自然分类。事物之间有没有永恒的或者上帝赋予的关系？如果有的话，怎么才能找到这种关系呢？在基督教时代，最常见的假设是上帝在最开始创造了动植物的每个物种，让亚当去命名，我们现在看到的是时间和机会的结果。

Linnaeus was sympathetic to this view, but he realized just how much plants and animals had changed since their creation. This made a 'natural' classification very difficult to achieve. So what was needed first, he thought, were some simple rules to order and classify all the things of the world. Second, he wanted to give things a simple label to identify them. This was his life's task: he saw himself literally as a second Adam, giving things their precise names. After all, how could zoologists or botanists discuss a kind of 'dog' or a kind of 'lily' unless they knew exactly what kind they were talking about? Nature, Linnaeus thought, had to have pigeonholes, and when everything was in its proper box, then science could be done.

Linnaeus赞同这个观点，但他意识到自从这些动植物创造出来后改变了很多，这使自然分类就很难进行下去。所以他认为首先需要的是一些简单的规则来整理分类世界上所有的事物；第二，他希望给事物贴上简单的标签以进行识别。这是他一生的工作：他将自己视作第二个亚当，为事物进行精确的命名。毕竟，一个动物学家或植物学家如果不能精确的知道每种“狗”或“百合”的名称，怎么与别人进行讨论呢？Linnaeus认为自然必须有个分类架，当每件事物都在合适的盒子中时，才能进行科学研究。

Linnaeus classified just about everything: minerals, diseases, plants and animals. Among the animals, he made a bold move: he included human beings in his scheme. In fact, he gave us the biological name we still have: Homo sapiens, which literally means 'wise, or knowing, man'. Many naturalists before Linnaeus had confined themselves to what is sometimes called the 'natural world', and therefore excluded human beings from their schemes. Linnaeus, the son of a minister, was deeply religious. As he pointed out, however, there were no biological reasons why human beings were not simply animals, as are dogs and monkeys, and so they needed to be included in his system of nature.

Linnaeus对所有事物都进行了分类：矿物，疾病，植物，动物。在动物中，他进行了大胆的一步：他将人类也包括在了其计划中。实际上，他赋予人类的生物名字现在还在使用：智人，文字意思就是“智慧，或有知识的人”。Linnaeus之前的很多博物学家都将自己局限在有时候称作的“自然世界”中，所以将人类排除在命名计划中。Linnaeus作为一位牧师的儿子，宗教信仰浓厚。但就像他指出的那样，没有任何生物原因说明人类不是简单的生物，就像狗和猴子一样，所以人类应当包括在他的自然体系当中。

The two most important categories for Linnaeus in his work of taxonomy (the scientific word for classification) were the genus and the species. He always used a capital letter to name the genus (we still do), and a lower-case letter for the species: thus Homo sapiens. The genus was a group of plants or animals that shared more basic characteristics than species share. For example, there are several different species of cat in the genus Felis, including our domestic cat (Felis catus) and the wildcat (Felis silvestris). (In those days everyone learned Latin in school, so his labeling would have been easy to understand: felis meant 'cat', catus 'cunning', and silvestris 'of the woods'.)

Linnaeus分类法的工作中最重要的两个类别是“属”和“种”。他一直用一个大写字母来对属进行命名（我们现在也是），用小写字母代表种：所以智人是Homo Sapiens。同一属的动植物比同一物种有更加基础的共同特征，比如，在Felis属中有几种不同的猫的物种，包括我们的家养猫（Felis Catus），野猫（Felis silvestris）。（在那个时代里每个人都在学校里都学习拉丁文，所以他的分类标签很容易理解：felis意思是猫，catus意思是可爱的，silvestris意思是森林里的）

Linnaeus knew that there were different levels of resemblance or difference between living creatures. At the top of his grand scheme he had three kingdoms: plants, animals and minerals. Under these were classes, such as the vertebrates (animals with spinal cords: donkeys, lizards, and so on); within a class were orders, such as the mammals (creatures that suckle their young); one notch down was the genus; followed by the species. Below species, there were varieties. Within the human species, these varieties were called 'races'. Of course, there are individuals - a person, plant or animal with its own peculiar characteristics, such as height, male or female, hair or eye color, or tone of voice. But you don't classify individuals as such, rather you put them into a group that you can then classify. Later scientists found they had to add extra ranks into Linnaeus's original system, such as families, sub-families and tribes. Lions, tigers and domestic cats are now all grouped in the family of cats.

Linnaeus知道生物之间的相似性或差异是分层次的。他宏大计划的最高层有三个领域：植物，动物，矿物。在这之下是纲(class)，比如脊椎动物（有脊髓的动物：猴子，蜥蜴，等等）；纲之内是目(order)，比如哺乳动物（给幼崽哺乳的生物）；下一层级是属(genus)，然后是种(species)。种之下，还有种种(variety)。在人种之下，这些种种我们称为“种族”(race)。当然，还有个体，一个人，一株植物，一只动物，都有各自不同的特征，比如高度，雄性或雌性，头发、眼睛的颜色，声调。但你不通过这些特征对个体进行分类，你会将之放到一个群体中，然后进行分类工作。后世的科学家发现他们需要对Linnaeus原本的体系加入额外的层级，比如科(family)，亚科，以及族(tribe)。狮子、老虎和家猫现在都分类在猫科下。

The sum total of all individual plants and animals makes up the living world, and it was this that Buffon referred to when he insisted that this basic category - the individual - was the only certain one.

所有的动植物个体共同组成了生物世界，且只有Buffon所说的，最基本的分类 – 个体 – 才是唯一确定的。

The really crucial level for Linnaeus was that of the species. He devised a simple system for identifying each plant species, based on the male and female parts of their flowers. It allowed amateur botanists to roam the woods and fields and identify what they were seeing. Even though it was only in plants, Linnaeus's sexual system disturbed some people and also stimulated a few mildly erotic poems. Most importantly, his classification of plants worked well. It gave botany a real boost. After Linnaeus's death, his important plant collections were bought by a wealthy Englishman, who established the Linnean Society of London. It is active to this day, after more than 200 years.

Linnaeus体系中最重要的层级是种(species)。他设计一套简单的系统来识别每个植物物种，就是基于其花朵的雄性或雌性部分。这使业余植物学家漫游在森林田野中时也能识别他们看到的东西，即使只在植物领域，Linnaeus的性别系统让有些人感到不安，也鼓励出了一些略有色情的诗歌作品。最重要的是，他关于植物的分类工作应用良好。这给了植物学真正的促进。Linnaeus去世后，他重要的植物收藏被一位富裕的英国人收买，并建立了伦敦Linnaeus协会，在200多年后的今天，这个协会仍然活跃。

We still use many of the names that Linnaeus introduced to identify plants and animals. One of them was the order of animals that includes human beings, the primates. We share that order with apes, monkeys, lemurs and other animals that share many characteristics with us. Linnaeus did not believe that one species can evolve into another: he believed that God had specially created each separate species of plant and animal. But he realized that human beings were part of nature, and that the rules by which we study the natural world could also be used to understand mankind. What we mean exactly when we say that this or that group of plants or animals is a biological species continued to puzzle naturalists. It still does. But Linnaeus's framework was changed a century later, by another naturalist who also loved plants: Charles Darwin. We will pick up the story in Chapter 25.

今天的我们仍然使用Linnaeus引入的很多命名来识别动物和植物，其中一个是包含了人类的动物目，灵长类。我们和猿、猴子、狐猴以及其他动物一起拥有很多共同特征。Linnaeus不相信一个物种的动植物可以演化为另一个物种：他相信上帝特意创造了每个分离的动植物物种。但他意识到人类是自然的一部分，我们研究自然界所用的规则也可以应用到理解人类身上。我们说这群或那群动物/植物的时候，真正的意思是生物学意义上的物种，这一直都没有让博物学家完全解开疑惑，现在还是。但Linnaeus的框架一个世纪后被改变了，改变的人是另一位喜爱植物的博物学家：达尔文。我们在第25章会讲到这个故事。