Turtles in Natural History:Also on Bowuxue and Natural History

In ancient China,the tie between humans and creatures is not only physical or ecological as modern biology has revealed,but also a spiritual one.This means that the ancient Chinese understanding of creatures could not be objective.This paper tries to explore this relationship with the turtle as an example.The Chinese understanding of the turtle is deeply influenced by Confucian classics,bowu and practical tradition.In China,there is natural history or learned tradition,but basically no natural history with nature as the main research object;thus natural science is difficult to be developed.The accumulation and spread of such knowledge contains rich cultural information and is the research object of ethnobiology and ethnozoology.