“非洲內陸白人族”

Abstract

十八世紀許多學者相信非洲內陸有「白人族」：不論是主張人類單一起源論的毛波推伊(Maupertuis)、布豐(Buffon)，或是主張人類多元起源論的伏爾泰，都相信非洲內陸地區存在著一些「白人」。當時有些學者認為這些「白人」就是所謂的「阿爾比諾族」(Albinos)，但是有些人則堅決否認此看法。此外，林奈認為，在人類以及猿猴的中間有一個中間的物種，他稱之為「夜間穴居人」。研究結果顯示，林奈「夜間穴居人」的知識來源主要是近代歐洲人所撰寫的遊記，以及一些古代作家的作品，例如荷馬的《伊里亞得》、希羅多德的《歷史》、亞里斯多德的《動物研究》、老普林的《自然研究》、波寇披厄斯(Procopius)的《戰爭史》。由此，我們可以得知：啟蒙運動時期哲士在構思自然科學知識時，古典傳統仍然相當重要。本研究即以林奈的看法為出發點，探討西方近代知識形成過程中科學知識與古典文學的互動關係。

A white people inhabiting in Africa generated great curiosity among the eighteenth-century savants, especially because it correlated with the question of the origin of human beings. Those savants, no matter they supported monogenism (Buffon, for example), or polygenism (Voltaire, for example), strongly believed the existence of legendary white people living in African inlands. Some thought that it belonged to a race of Albinos, while some others resolutely denied this opinion. In addition, Linnaeus adovcated that a sort of "Homo trogelodytes" or "Homo nocturnus" stands between Homo sapiens and monkeys. This study starts from Linnaeus' strange imagination and focuses on the interaction of the scientfic knowledge and classical literature in modern Europe. The sources consulted by this Swedish savant perhaps primarily derived from the travelogues and the classical writers, such as, Homer, Herodotus, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Procopius and so on. Linnaeus' case shows that the formation of the natural knowledge among the philosophes of the Enlightenment largely depended on the heritage of ancient literature.