John Ray, an English naturalist regarded as one of the earliest English parson-naturalists, published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. As the first to introduce the term “species,” Ray is recognized as the “Father of English natural history,” a founder of Modern Biology, elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667.
Biographical Overview
At the age of sixteen, Ray enter Cambridge University to study at Trinity College.
Starting with Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium (1660), and ending with the posthumous publication of Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium in 1713, Ray published systematic works on plants, birds, mammals, fish, and insects, in which he brought order to the chaotic mass of names in use by the naturalists of his time.
Like Carolus Linnaeus, understanding nature to follow a Divine Order, Ray assigned names to reflect this presumed “natural system.”
In the 1690s, Ray published three volumes on religion—the most popular being The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), an essay describing evidence that all in nature and space is God’s creation as in the Bible is affirmed.
Born in England, 1672-1705
Worldview
Using a biblical worldview perspective, Ray successfully applied the scientific method to investigate the laws of nature, His worldview is notable from what he said –
“Our Understanding too dark and infirm to discover and comprehend all the Ends and Uses to which the infinitely wise Creator did design them”
“My observation and affirmation is that there is no such thing in nature” and he referred to spontaneous generation as “the atheist’s fictitious and ridiculous account of the first production of mankind and other animals.”
“The plants and animals were ‘the works created by God at first, and by Him conserved to this day in the same state and condition in which they were first made.’
“The number of corporeal Creatures is unmeasurably great, and known only to the Creator himself.”
“The infinitely Wise Creator hath shewn many instances, that he is not confin’d to one only instrument for the working one Effect, but can perform the same thing by divers means.”
“We received our Life and Being from a Divine Wisdom and Power.”
Scientific investigation is “a proper exercise of man’s faculties and a legitimate field of Christian inquiry.”
“There is for a free man no occupation more worthy and delightful than to contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honour the infinite wisdom and goodness of God.”
“No surer criterion for determining [plant] species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed… Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa.”
“If the number of the creatures be so exceedingly great, how great, nay, immense, must needs be the power and wisdom of him who formed them all! For (that I may borrow the words of a noble and excellent author) as it argues and manifests more skill by far in an artificer, to be able to frame both clocks and watches, and pumps and mills, and grandiose and rockets, than he could display in making but one of those sorts of engines; so the Almighty discovers more of his wisdom in forming such a vast multitude of different sorts of creatures, and all with admirable and irrevocable art, than if he had created a few; for this declares the greatness and unbounded capacity of his understanding. Again, the same superiority of knowledge and would be displayed by contriving engines of the same kind, or for the same purpose, after different fashions, as moving of clocks by springs instead of weights: so the infinitely wise Creator hath shown in many instances that he is not confined to one only instrument for the working of one effect, but can perform the same thing by divers means. So, though features seem necessary for flying, yet hath he enabled several creatures to fly without them, as two sorts of fishes, one sort of lizard, and the bat, not to mention the numerous tribes of flying insects. In like manner, though the air-bladder in fishes seems necessary for swimming, yet some are so formed as to swim without it, vis., First, the cartilaginous kind, which by artifice they poise themselves, ascend and descend at pleasure, and continue in what depth of water they list, is as yet unknown to us. Secondly, the cetaceous kind, or sea-beasts differing in nothing almost but want of feet. The air which in respiration these receive into their lungs, may serve to render their bodies equiponderant to the water; and the construction and dilation of it, by the help of the diaphragm and muscles of respiration, may probably assist them to ascend or descend in the water, by an impulse thereof with their fins.”
