从毕达哥拉斯学派到现代分子生物学——关于物种概念、分类及系统进化的哲学回归

From Pythagoras' School to Curren t Molecular Biology——Return of Philosophical Ideaology for Species Concept and Phylorenet ic Classification

物种与进化的问题具体到生物学领域所采用的方法显然是一门具体的自然科学。但是从解决问题的思维方式来看应该是自然界的 ,即哲学的。古希腊先哲们对此有不同认识 ,亚里士多德提出著名的存在之链 ,毕达哥拉斯认为自然界事物的多样性只不过是几何结构及数的不同比例的差异 ,即所谓的“万物的本质是数”。对物种的认识及生物进化 ,生物分类学家、系统进化研究者所持观念与不同时期的哲学流派相联系 ,因此有本质论的、唯名论的以及生物学的、进化论的、系统学的物种概念。现代分子生物学极大的促进了物种分类学、系统学的发展 ,人们对物种概念及生物进化有了更深层次的认识 ,但是从哲学的角度看却又回归到了古希腊圣哲们的思想藩篱。

means used to study probl ems of species and evolution in th e field of life science obviously belong to the realm of natural sci ence,but way of thinking to resolv e a specific problem should be phi losophical.Philosophers in ancient Greece hold seperatly their differ ent perspectives for understanding species and category of things.Ari stotle raised the well-known chain of existence,and Pythagoras consid ered that varieties of things woul d only be different on geometric s tructure and proportion of things,namely so-called'essence of all th ings is number'.Species concept de fined by systematist and scholars of studying phylogenetics are conc erned with philosophical school at that time,which consist of biologic al,evolutionary,phylogenetic and e ssentialistic,nominalistic species concept and so on.Although modern molecular biology extremely accele rates department of taxonomy and p hylogenetics,and then people under stand profoundly species and life evolution,thinking ways of solving a problem eventually fall into idea ology of philosophers in ancient G reece from philosophical viewpoint.