晚明夏之臣及其“忽变”说

XIA ZHICHEN OF LATE MING AND HIS "MUTATION" THEORY

从文艺复兴,到十八世纪中叶瑞典林耐(C.von Linne,1707—1778)的《植物哲学》(1751)一书出版,欧洲许多博物学家,如H.Bock(1498—1554)、A.Servet(1509—1553)、A.Vesalius(1514—1564)、A.Sasalpini(1519—1603)、K.Bauhin(1560—1624)、W.Harvey(1578—1657)、M.Malpighi(1628—1694)、J.Ray(1628—1705)、J.Tournefort(1656—1708)、R.Camerarius(1665—1721)等,尽管在分类学、解剖学、胚胎学和生理学诸领域积累了较前更丰富的资料,可是大多数学者的自然观仍处于形而上学的禁锢之中,否认有机界的任何发展,相信一切物种都是上帝创造的并且永恒不变。

Sometime between 1583 and 1613, Xia Zhichen wrote a paper entitled On the Peonies of Bozhou. Based on his personal experience and observation, the paper presents a primitive theory of plant evolution developed from a positive knowledge of the culture of peonies of his predecessors, especially from the experience of local florists in seedling reproduction. According to his theory, the diversity of peony varieties results from the "mutation" of their seeds during seedling reproduction as has been proved by modern geneticists. However, over the past three hundred years or so no one else had ever proposed a similar view. Therefore, Xia Zhichen was a much earlier figure than Korjinsky (1899) or de Vries (1901-1903) in the history of the evolutionary idea in biology.