托马斯·赫胥黎论博物学的教育价值

Thomas Huxley's View on the Educational Value of Nature History

考证托马斯·赫胥黎的演讲和论著,发现早期他将博物学和生物学混为一谈。在此基础上,他认为该学科在智力训练和人文关照方面均具有重要价值。随着19世纪中期的科学进展,赫胥黎逐渐意识到两个学科背后的范式不同:博物学代表经验论的科学范式,而生物学则代表数理科学范式。后期他主张以生物学代替博物学,并有力推动了生物学在英国的教育体制化。这是19世纪英国博物学衰落的外部原因之一。尽管博物学的人文价值被忽略,但在生态学中,这种价值理念得到传承。

By textual research on Thomas Huxley＇s lectures and books, it can be found that he mixed natural history and biology early, and thought highly of its value of intellectual and humanistic care. With the development of science in the middle 19 th century, he gradually realized the different paradigm behind these two subjects： natural history means empiricism tradition, and biology represents mathematical experimental tradition. Later stage, he proposed the replacement of natural history by biology, and made contributed greatly to the institutionalization of biology in Britain. This was one of the external causes of the decline of natural history in 19 th century. Although the cultural value of natural history was neglected, the spirit was inherited in ecology.