Botany
Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar 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 preindustrial 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, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them, botany, as such, 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 of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our 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 yields 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 marvel 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 and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.
植物学，即对植物的研究，在人类常识的历史中占据了特殊的地位。 这是人类几千年来超越模糊的认知而真的知道一些的范围之一。 大家今天不可能了解新石器年代的祖先们对植物到底知道多少，但大家在到今天仍存在的前工业化社会察看到：人类对植物及其特质的详细知道应该是很古老的。 这是理所当然的。 植物是其他生物甚至其他植物食物金字塔的基础。 它们对大家的生活至关要紧，不只在食物上，而且在衣物、武器、工具、染料、药物、住所和许很多多其他的作用上。 到今天仍生活在亚马逊河丛林中的部落确实可以辨识几百种植物并了解每一种的很多特质。 对他们来讲，植物学没专门的名字，甚至可能根本未被觉得是一种专门常识。 不幸的是，工业化的程度越高，大家距直接与植物接触就越远，大家的植物学常识的增加也就越微不足道。 然而每一个人在无声无息中拥有很多的植物学常识，极少有人认不出玫瑰、苹果或兰花。 大约一万年前居住在中东的新年代的祖先们发现某些草能被收成，它们的种子下一季耕种会收成更多时，人类就迈出了人和植物之间的新关系第一大步。 谷子被发现后，农业的奇迹从此诞生：这就是可栽培的谷物。 从那时起，人类愈加依靠少数可控制的作物存活，而不再是从海量的野生类型中这里获得一点，那里获得一点。 如此在千万年中对于野生植物的经验和密切联系中积累起来的常识就开始消失了。
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