人類從未間斷對植物的研究

Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years it was the one field of awareness about which humans had anything more than the vaguest of insights. It is impossible to know today just what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but form what we can observe of pre-industrial societies that still exist a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them, botany, as such, has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of “ knowledge” at all.
植物學(xué)，即對植物的研究，在人類知識(shí)的歷史中占據(jù)了特殊的地位。這是人類幾千年來超越模糊的認(rèn)知而真正有所了解的領(lǐng)域之一。我們今天不可能知道新石器時(shí)代的祖先們對植物到底了解多少，但我們在至今仍存在的前工業(yè)化社會(huì)觀察到：人類對植物及其特性的詳細(xì)了解應(yīng)該是非常古老的。這是理所當(dāng)然的。植物是其他生物甚至其他植物食物金字塔的基礎(chǔ)。它們對人們的生活至關(guān)重要，不僅在食物上，而且在衣物、武器、工具、染料、藥物、住所和許許多多其他的用途上。至今仍生活在亞馬遜河叢林中的部落確實(shí)能夠辨識(shí)幾百種植物并知道每一種的許多特性。對他們來說，植物學(xué)沒有專門的名稱，甚至可能根本未被認(rèn)為是一種專門知識(shí)。

Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild- and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.
不幸的是，工業(yè)化的程度越高，我們距直接與植物接觸就越遠(yuǎn)，我們的植物學(xué)知識(shí)的增加也就越微不足道。然而每個(gè)人在不知不覺中擁有大量的植物學(xué)知識(shí)，很少有人認(rèn)不出玫瑰、蘋果或蘭花。大約一萬年前居住在中東的新時(shí)代的祖先們發(fā)現(xiàn)某些草能被收獲，它們的種子下一季耕種會(huì)收獲更多時(shí)，人類就邁出了人和植物之間的新關(guān)系第一大步。 谷子被發(fā)現(xiàn)后，農(nóng)業(yè)的奇跡從此誕生：這就是可栽培的谷物。從那時(shí)起，人類越來越依賴少數(shù)可控制的作物生存，而不再是從眾多的野生種類中這里獲取一點(diǎn)，那里獲取一點(diǎn)。這樣在千萬年中對于野生植物的經(jīng)驗(yàn)和密切聯(lián)系中積累起來的知識(shí)就開始消失了。