“地理大交流”与中国古代地学思潮之嬗变

“The Larg-Scale Geographic Exchange” and the Evolution of Geoscientific Thought in Ancient China

一、问题的提出 1.关于“地理大交流”“地理大交流”的概念,是我国地理学家陈桥驿先生于1988年首次提出的。它表示从公元4世纪初到6世纪后期“发生在中国境内的巨大人群所经历的地理变异”。这场地理变异,表现为大群生活在北方草原上的游牧民族,一个部落一个部落地跨过长城,进入中原,“他们放弃了‘天苍苍,野茫茫’的自然地理环境和‘风吹草低见牛羊’的游牧生活,而定居到这片对他们来说是完全陌生的土地上从事农业活动”,而原来居住在中原地区的广大汉族人民则“放弃了他们世代定居的这片干燥坦荡的小麦粮区,迁移到低洼潮湿的江南稻作区”。这场人类历史上大规模的地理交流,以其发生时代之早、涉及范围之广、参与人口之多、延续时间之长以及其深远的影响,在地学史上占有重要一页。正是在这个意义上。

From the 4th century to the late 6th century, under the natural and man-made calamities, the large-scale emigration occurred within the boundaries of China, which is known as 'The Large-Scale Geographic Exchange' in historical circles. It was a glorious time for the Chinese ancient geoscientific research, and brought a prosperous period to the Chinese ancient science and technology. Since then, the Chinese geoscien- tific thought became a sound scholarship. The geoscientists found the starting point for research, and made caretully textual research on the Chinese ancient books and records in their practice. A lot of geoscientific books was permeated with 'the love of nature'. In the meantime, some ideas of evolution of the earth and the holism in geoscience presented too. A Chinese way of thought in geoscience had been founded, which was similar to but not the same with the western geoscientific thought, and had been lasted to the beginning of this century.