萬物簡史 第94期:勢不兩立的科學(xué)(2)

That the bone didn't attract greater interest is morethan a little puzzling, for its appearance came at atime when America was in a froth of excitementabout the remains of large, ancient animals. Thecause of this froth was a strange assertion by thegreat French naturalist the Comte de Buffon—he ofthe heated spheres from the previous chapter—thatliving things in the New World were inferior innearly every way to those of the Old World.

骨頭沒有引起很大的興趣，這有點(diǎn)兒令人費(fèi)解，因?yàn)榘l(fā)現(xiàn)這根骨頭恰好是在美國人對古代大動物的遺骸著迷的時候。偉大的法國博物學(xué)家布豐伯爵——就是前一章里提到的做加熱球體試驗(yàn)的人——對這種著迷的原因作出了奇怪的斷言：新大陸的生物幾乎在哪一方面都要比舊大陸的生物低一等。

America, Buffon wrote in his vast and much-esteemed Histoire Naturelle, was a land where thewater was stagnant, the soil unproductive, and the animals without size or vigor, theirconstitutions weakened by the "noxious vapors" that rose from its rotting swamps and sunlessforests. In such an environment even the native Indians lacked virility. "They have no beard orbody hair," Buffon sagely confided, "and no ardor for the female." Their reproductive organswere "small and feeble."

布豐在那部評價很高的巨著《自然史》里寫道，在美洲這塊土地上，水源發(fā)臭，土地不長五谷，動物個兒很小，缺乏活力，肌體被從腐爛的沼澤和曬不著太陽的森林里逸出的“毒氣”弄得十分虛弱。在這樣的環(huán)境里，連土著印第安人也缺乏生殖力。“他們不長胡子，身上也沒有毛，”布豐煞有介事地在私下說，“對女人沒有激情。”他們的生殖器“又小又沒有勁兒”。

Buffon's observations found surprisingly eager support among other writers, especially thosewhose conclusions were not complicated by actual familiarity with the country. A Dutchmannamed Comeille de Pauw announced in a popular work called Recherches Philosophiques surles Americains that native American males were not only reproductively unimposing, but "solacking in virility that they had milk in their breasts." Such views enjoyed an improbabledurability and could be found repeated or echoed in European texts till near the end of thenineteenth century.

布豐的觀察結(jié)果在別的作家中間——尤其在那些其實(shí)對這個國家不大熟悉，因而自己的結(jié)論也是缺乏根據(jù)的人中間——獲得了出人意料的熱烈支持。有個名叫科梅耶·波夫的荷蘭人在一本名叫《關(guān)于美洲人的哲學(xué)研究》的通俗作品中宣稱，美洲的土著男人不但在繁殖方面給人印象不深，而且“如此缺乏生殖能力，他們的乳房都流著奶汁”。這種觀點(diǎn)奇怪地流行了很長時間，在歐洲的文獻(xiàn)中反復(fù)出現(xiàn)或得到反響，直到19世紀(jì)快要結(jié)束的時候。