Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class.

旁白：请听一段生物学讲座。

Processor: Ok.

教授：好的。

There are two major types of classifiers in the world, people we call lumpers and people we call splitters.

在世界上有两种分类者，一种被我们称为统合派的人，一种被我们称为分割派的人。

A lumper is someone who tries to put as many things as possible in one category.

统合派的人会尽力把各种事物都放在一个分类下。

Splitters like to work for the differences and put things in as many different categories as possible.

分割派的人则会着眼于事物之间的区别，把它们尽力划分出最多的类别。

Both lumpers and splitters work in the business of defining biological classifications.

统合派的人和分割派的人都致力于确定生物的分类。

The great philosopher Aristotle is generally considered the first person to systematically categorize things.

伟大的哲学家亚里士多德一般会被认为是系统地为生物分类的第一人。

He divided all living things into two groups.

他把所有的生物分成了两个类别。

They were either animal or vegetable.

它们不是动物就是植物。

And these categories are what biologists came to call "kingdoms".

这些分类被生物学家称为“界”。

So if it ran around, it was an animal, a member of the animal kingdom.

所以如果一个生物可以四处跑来跑去，它就是动物，是动物界中的一员。

And if it stood still, and grew in the soil, it was a plant, a member of the plant kingdom.

如果它不动，长在土壤里，就是植物，属于植物界中的一员。

This system, organizing all life into these two kingdoms, worked very well for quite a while, even into the age of the microscope.

这个分类系统把所有的生命体都划分进了这两个界，它一直起着很好的分类作用，即使是在发明了显微镜的时代。

With the invention of the microscope, in the late 1500s, we discovered the first microorganisms.

随着十六世纪末期显微镜的发明，我们发现了第一批微生物。

We saw that some wiggled and moved around and others were green and just sat there.

我们认为一部分生物是可以自由移动的，另一部分是绿色且不动的。

So the ones that moved like animals were classified as animals, and the more plant-like ones as plants.

所以那一些像动物一样可以移动的就被归类成了动物，更像植物的生物就被归类成了植物。

Oh, before I go on I must mention Carolus Linnaeus.

哦，在我继续讲下去之前我必须先提一下卡罗勒斯·林奈。

A hundred years or so after the invention of the microscope, Carolus Linnaeus devised a simple and practical system for classifying living things, according to the ranks of categorization still in use today——class, order, family and so on.

大约在显微镜发明的一百年后，卡罗勒斯•林奈发明出了一个给生物分类的简单而实用的系统，这个系统是根据等级编目法的——涉及的等级有纲，目，科等等，这些等级现在还在使用。

And by further best aspect of the Linnaeus system, is the general use of binomial nomenclature, having just two names to describe any living organism.

至今为止，林奈的分类系统最好的一点是，他普遍使用了双名法，也就是只使用两个名字来命名任何一种生物。

This replaced the use of long descriptive names, as well as common names which vary from place to place and language to language.

这就代替了长长的描述性名字，也代替了地域之间、语言之间各不相同的对物种的俗称。

Binomial nomenclature gives every species a unique and stable two-word name, agreed upon by biologists worldwide.

双名法给每一个物种都起了一个独特稳定的双词名字，并且被全世界的生物学家所认同。

But not everything about this system remained unchanged.

但是这个系统也并不是没有变化的。

Take for example the mushroom, a fungus.

我们拿蘑菇，一种真菌的例子来说。

It grew up from the ground and looked like a plant.

蘑菇从地里长出来，看起来像是植物。

So it was classified as a plant.

它以前也是被分到植物那一类的。

But using the microscope we discovered that a fungus contains these microscopic thread-like cells that run all over the place.

但是使用显微镜，我们发现真菌身上有这些微小的线状细胞，它们到处都是。

And so it’s actually not that plant-like.

这就真的不像是植物了。

So in this case, the splitters eventually won, and got a third kingdom just for the fungus.

所以在这种情况下，分割派的人取得了最终的胜利，他们为真菌分出了第三个界。

And as microscopes improved, we discovered some microorganisms that were incredibly small.

随着显微镜的逐渐改进，我们发现一些微生物是非常之小的。

I’m talking about bacteria.

我在说细菌。

And we could see that they didn’t have what we call a nucleus.

我们可以看到它们并没有细胞核。

So they got their own kingdom, a kingdom of very tiny things without nucleoli.

所以它们要独立出自己的界，一个没有核仁的非常小的生物的界。

So then we had several kingdoms for plants and for animals, and the different kinds of fungus like mushrooms, and for these tiny bacteria.

所以植物、动物、不同种类的真菌比如蘑菇，还有这些小小的细菌各自属于自己的界。

But we also had some other microorganisms that didn’t fit anywhere.

但是我们还有一些别的微生物，它们不属于任何一个界。

So biologist gave them their own kingdom.

所以生物学家给它们单独分出了自己的界。

And this fifth kingdom was sort of anything that doesn’t fit in the first four kingdom, which upset some people.

这个第五界是不属于前四个界的生物的，这使得一些人沮丧。

And then there was a question of viruses.

还有一个问题就是病毒。

Viruses have some characteristics of life but don’t reproduce on their own or use energy.

病毒有一些生命体的特征，但是它们并不能自体繁殖，也不能使用能量。

So we still don’t know what to do with them.

所以我们仍然不知道该怎么给病毒分类。

The lumpers want to keep viruses in the current system.

统合派的人想把病毒也包含进目前的分类系统里。

Some of the splitters say to give them a separate kingdom.

一些分割派的人说应该给病毒单独分出一个新的界。

And the extreme splitters say that viruses have nothing at all to do with living things and keep them out of my department.

还有一些极端的分割派的人说病毒和生命体并没有什么关系，它们不能进入现在的生物分类系统。

Recent research though has moved to see yet another direction.

然而近期的研究指向了另一个方向。

Nowadays when we want to determine the characteristics of something, we look at its biochemistry and its genetic material.

现在，当我们想去确定一些生物的特征的时候，我们会看它的生物化学特征及基因组成。

And what we’ve discovered is that some bacteria are not like the others.

我们发现的是，一些细菌和其它细菌并不一样。

Many of these are called extremophiles.

很多这种细菌被称为极端微生物。

They live in very strange places, in polar ice or in a boiling water of hot springs or in water so salty other organisms couldn’t live there.

它们居住在非常奇怪的地方，比如在极地冰层里，热温泉沸腾的泉水里或者在其它细菌存活不下去的高盐度的水里。

Extremophiles tend to have a different chemistry from other bacteria, a chemistry that in some case is actually more related to plants and animals than to previously known bacteria.

极端微生物和别的细菌结构有差异，它们含有一种某些情况下与动植物联系更加密切的化学物质，这种物质与我们先前知道的细菌的联系倒是没有那么密切。

So what to do with this strange bacteria?

所以我们该怎么划分这种奇怪的细菌呢？

Well, one thing we’ve done is creating a new set of categories, the domains, overarching the different kingdoms.

我们已经做了的一件事是创造一系列新的分类，这个范畴横跨不同的界。

Biologists now recognize three domains.

生物学家现在定下了三个范畴。

But even as we talk about these new domains, well, come back in a few years and it might all be different.

但是甚至就是在我们正在谈论这些新的范畴的时候，几年之后，它们也许会变得和现在很不一样。