丁文江

丁文江 is central to 19.荒野上的大师：“我辈于乱世求研究，本为逆流之妄举” as a geologist, organizer, and model of Fieldwork As Knowledge Method / 田野作为知识方法. The episode says he became the first head of the 地质研究所 at a very young age and helped train a first generation of modern Chinese geologists through field survey, mining investigation, mapping, and laboratory practice.

The source also makes 丁文江 a reader and reinterpreter of 徐霞客. Carrying 《徐霞客游记》 in the field, he recognizes that Xu had reached many places long before modern geology, then later edits and republishes Xu’s text to restore the knowledge-seeking meaning behind the older travel record. His later administrative work for the central academy is presented as institution-building that advanced Chinese scholarship but also consumed his own research time.

Key Claims

• Ding’s fieldwork rejects the stereotype of Chinese scholars as book-bound and unwilling to walk the land.
• His geology connects science to mines, labor, national resources, and global events.
• His recovery of Xu Xiake gives modern field science a Chinese genealogy.
• The episode treats him as one of the clearest cases of Modern Chinese Academic Institution Building / 中国现代学术制度建设 as scholarship.

Connections

• 地质研究所/地质调查所 - institution he helped build.
• 徐霞客 - earlier traveler-scholar whom Ding rereads as a knowledge seeker.
• 傅斯年 - parallel institution designer in the episode.
• Fieldwork As Knowledge Method / 田野作为知识方法, Cosmopolitan Chinese Scholarship / 世界主义的中国学术, and Modern Chinese Academic Institution Building / 中国现代学术制度建设 - main concept links.