植物学Botany

植物学Botany
Botany
　　Botany, the study of plants, occupies a particular 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 from 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, tools, medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes．Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon recognize hundreds of plants and know many properties of each．To them, botany has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of "knowledge" at all．
　　Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become, the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge grows．Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose or an apple．When nor 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 fields 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 wonder 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 with plants in the wild would begin to fade away．

植物学
　　植物学研究植物在人类知识史中占有特殊的地位。数千年来，人类只知道哪些人比任何人更有洞察力，这是一个领域。今天不可能知道什么是什么我们的石器时代的祖先知道植物，但从我们所看到的仍然存在的前工业社会，对植物及其特性的详细了解必须是非常古老的。
　　这是合乎逻辑的。植物是所有生物食物金字塔的基础，甚至是其他植物。它们一直对人们的福利非常重要，不仅是食物，而且服装，工具，药品，住房和一个伟大的许多其他的目的。今天生活在亚马逊丛林中的妓女认识了数百种植物，并了解了它们的许多特性。对他们来说，植物学没有名字，可能根本不被认为是“知识”的特殊分支。
　　不幸的是，我们变得越工业化，我们离植物的直接接触就越远，而我们的知识越不明显。每个人都在不知不觉中植入了大量的植物知识，很少有人会认不出玫瑰或苹果。当大约一万年前居住在中东的新石器时代的祖先们发现，在下一个季节，某些草可以被收割，并且它们的种子被种植成更加丰富的田地，这是第一个在植物和人类新的关联中迈出的第一步他们发现了一些水晶，并从中发现了农业的奇迹：种植的农作物。从那时起，人类将越来越多地从一些植物的控制生产中获得生命，而不是在这里生长一点点，野生的，数万年来与野生植物的经验积累的知识将开始消失。