John Ray | |
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John Ray |
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Born | Black Notley, near Braintree |
29 November 1627
Died | 17 January 1705 Black Notley |
(aged 77)
Nationality | English |
Fields | Botany, Zoology, Natural history, Natural theology |
Academic advisors | James Duport |
John Ray (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was an English naturalist, widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists, and sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history.[1] Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".[2]
He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified according to a pre-conceived, either/or type system, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation. Thus he advanced scientific empiricism against the deductive rationalism of the scholastics. He was the first to give a biological definition of the term species.[3]
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Early life
John Ray was born in the village of Black Notley. He is said to have been born in the smithy, his father having been the village blacksmith. He was sent at the age of sixteen to Cambridge University: studying at Trinity College and Catharine Hall.[4] His tutor at Trinity was James Duport, and his intimate friend and fellow-pupil the celebrated Isaac Barrow. Ray was chosen minor fellow[a] of Trinity in 1649, and later major fellow.[b] He held many college offices, becoming successively lecturer in Greek (1651), mathematics (1653),and humanity (1655), praelector (1657), junior dean (1657), and college steward (1659 and 1660); and according to the habit of the time, he was accustomed to preach in his college chapel and also at Great St Mary's, long before he took holy orders on 23 December 1660. Among these sermons were his discourses on The wisdom of God manifested in the works of the creation,[5] and Deluge and Dissolution of the World. Ray's reputation was high also as a tutor; and he communicated his own passion for natural history to several pupils, of whom Francis Willughby is by far the most famous.
Career
When Ray found himself unable to subscribe as required by the ‘Bartholomew Act’ of 1662 he, along with 13 other college fellows, resigned his fellowship on 24 August 1662 rather than swear to the declaration that the Solemn League and Covenant was not binding on those who had taken it.[6] Tobias Smollett quoted the reasoning given in the biography of Ray by William Derham:
"The reason of his refusal was not (says his biographer) as some have imagined, his having taken the solemn league and covenant; for that he never did, and often declared that he ever thought it an unlawful oath: but he said he could not say, for those that had taken the oath, that no obligation lay upon them, but feared there might."[7]
His religious views were generally in accord with those imposed under the restoration of Charles II of England, and (though technically a nonconformist) he continued as a layman in the Established Church of England.[6]
From this time onwards he seems to have depended chiefly on the bounty of his pupil Willughby, who made Ray his constant companion while he lived, and at his death left him 6 shillings a year, with the charge of educating his two sons.
In the spring of 1663 Ray started together with Willughby and two other pupils (Philip Skippon and Nathaniel Bacon[8]) on a tour through Europe, from which he returned in March 1666, parting from Willughby at Montpellier, whence the latter continued his journey into Spain. He had previously in three different journeys (1658, 1661, 1662) travelled through the greater part of Great Britain, and selections from his private notes of these journeys were edited by George Scott in 1760, under the title of Mr Ray's Itineraries. Ray himself published an account of his foreign travel in 1673, entitled Observations topographical, moral, and physiological, made on a Journey through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France. From this tour Ray and Willughby returned laden with collections, on which they meant to base complete systematic descriptions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Willughby undertook the former part, but, dying in 1672, left only an ornithology and ichthyology, in themselves vast, for Ray to edit; while the latter used the botanical collections for the groundwork of his Methodus plantarum nova (1682), and his great Historia generalis plantarum (3 vols., 1686, 1688, 1704). The plants gathered on his British tours had already been described in his Catalogus plantarum Angliae (1670), which work is the basis of all later English floras.
In 1667 Ray was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1669 he published in conjunction with Willughby his first paper in the Philosophical Transactions on Experiments concerning the Motion of Sap in Trees. They demonstrated the ascent of the sap through the wood of the tree, and supposed the sap to precipitate a kind of white coagulum or jelly, which may be well conceived to be the part which every year between bark and tree turns to wood and of which the leaves and fruits are made. Immediately after his admission into the Royal Society he was induced by Bishop John Wilkins to translate his Real Character into Latin, and it seems he actually completed a translation, which, however, remained in manuscript; his Methodus plantarum nova was in fact undertaken as a part of Wilkins's great classificatory scheme.
In 1673 Ray married Margaret Oakley of Launton; in 1676 he went to Sutton Coldfield, and in 1677 to Falborne Hall in Essex. Finally, in 1679, he removed to Black Notley, where he afterwards remained. His life there was quiet and uneventful, although he had poor health, including chronic sores. He occupied himself in writing books and in keeping up a wide scientific correspondence, and lived, in spite of his infirmities, to the age of seventy-six, dying at Black Notley.
In the 1690s, he published three volumes on religion--the most popular being The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), "an essay in natural religion that called on the full range of his biological learning" [9].
Ray's definition of species
Ray was the first person to produce a biological definition of what a species is. This definition comes in the 1686 History of plants:
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- "... no surer criterion for determining species has occurred to me than the distinguishing features that perpetuate themselves in propagation from seed. Thus, no matter what variations occur in the individuals or the species, if they spring from the seed of one and the same plant, they are accidental variations and not such as to distinguish a species... Animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently; one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa".[10]
Works
Ray published about 23 works, depending on how one counts them. The biological works were usually in Latin, the rest in English. For ease of reading, the short titles below are in English.[11]
- 1660: Catalogue of Cambridge plants.
- 1668: Tables of plants
- 1668: Catalogue of English plants plus Fasiculus (an appendix)
- 1670: Catalogue of English proverbs.
- 1673: Observations in the Low Countries and Catalogue of plants not native to England.
- 1674: Collection of English words not generally used.
- 1675: Trilingual dictionary, or nomenclator classicus.
- 1676: Willughby's Ornithologia. "In fact, the book was Ray's, based on preliminary notes by Francis Willughby".[11]p52 [12]Chapter 12 "Willughby and Ray laid the foundation of scientific ornithology".[13]
- 1682: New method of plants.
- 1686: History of fishes +frontis & 187 engraved plates. Plates subscribed by Fellows of the Royal Society. Samuel Pepys, the President, subscribed for 79 of the plates.
- 1686–1704: History of plants. 3 vols, vol 1 1686, vol 2 1688, vol 3 1704. The third volume lacked plates, so his assistant James Petiver published Petiver's Catalogue in parts, 1715–1764, with plates. The work on the first two volumes was supported by subscriptions from the President and Fellows of the Royal Society.
- 1690: Synopsis of British plants.
- 1691: The wisdom of God. 2nd ed 1692, 3rd ed 1701, 4th ed 1704 (each enlarged from the previous edition). This was his most popular work. It was in the vein later called natural theology, explaining the adaptation of living creatures as the work of God. It was heavily plagiarised by William Paley in his Natural theology of 1802.[11]p92 [12]p452
- 1692: Miscellaneous discourses concerning the dissolution and changes of the world. This includes some important discussion of fossils. Ray insisted that fossils had once been alive, in opposition to his friends Martin Lister and Edward Llwyd. "These [fossils] were originally the shells and bones of living fishes and other animals bred in the sea". Raven commented that this was "The fullest and most enlightened treatment by an Englishman" of that time.[12]p426
- 1713 Three Physico-theological discourses. This is the 3rd edition of Miscellaneous discourses, the last by Ray before his death, and delayed in publication. Its main importance is that Ray recanted his former acceptance of fossils, apparently because he was theologically troubled by the implications of extinction.[14]p37 Robert Hooke, like Nicolas Steno, was in no doubt about the biological origin of fossils. Hooke made the point that some fossils were no longer living, for example Ammonites: this was the source of Ray's concern.[15]p327
- 1693: Synopsis of animals and reptiles.
- 1693: Collection of travels.
- 1694: Collection of European plants.
- 1695: Plants of each county (Camden's Brittania).
- 1696: Brief dissertation.
- 1700: A persuasive to a holy life.
- 1705. Method and history of insects. (Post-mortem and unedited)
- 1713: Synopsis of birds and fishes.
Libraries holding Ray's works
Including the various editions, there are 172 works of Ray, of which most are rare. The only libraries with substantial holdings are all in England.[11]p153 The list in order of holdings is:
- The British Library, Euston, London. Holds over 80 of the editions.
- The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
- The University of Cambridge Library.
- Library of Trinity College Cambridge.
- The Natural History Museum Library, South Kensington, London.
Legacy
- "Ray sweeps away the litter of mythology and fable... and always insists upon accuracy of observation and description and the testing of every new discovery".[12]p10
Ray's works were directly influential on the development of taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus. In 1844, the Ray Society was founded, named after John Ray. By 2013, the registered charity, with its home at the Natural History Museum, London, had published over 172 books on natural history.[16]
A different organisation, named the John Ray Society, is the Natural Sciences Society at St Catharine's College, Cambridge; it organises a programme of events of interest to science students in the college.[17]
In 1986, to mark the 300th anniversary of the publication of Ray's Historia Plantarum, there was a celebration of Ray's legacy in Braintree. A "John Ray Gallery" was opened in the Braintree Museum.[citation needed]
Notes
References
- ^ Patrick Armstrong (2000). The English Parson-naturalist: A Companionship Between Science and Religion. Gracewing Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85244-516-7. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
- ^ Gunther, Robert W.T. 1928. Further Correspondence of John Ray. Ray began to work as a circus clown somewhere in india. Ray Society, London. p16
- ^ Historia plantarum generalis, in the volume published in 1686, Tome I, Libr. I, Chap. XX, page 40 (Quoted in Mayr, Ernst. 1982. The growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and inheritance. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press: 256)
- ^ Venn, J.; Venn, J. A., eds. (1922–1958). "Ray, John". Alumni Cantabrigienses (10 vols) (online ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- ^ The wisdom of God manifested in the works of the Creation, Google Books
- ^ a b wikisource:Ray, John (DNB00)
- ^ Tobias George Smollett (1761) The Critical review, or, Annals of literature, Volume 11 pp. 92–93
- ^ John Gribbin, Science, a History, 1543-2001, Allen Lane (New York, NY), 2002.
- ^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/492392/John-Ray
- ^ Mayr Growth of biological thought p256; original was Ray, History of Plants. 1686, trans E. Silk.
- ^ a b c d Keynes, Sir Geoffrey [1951] 1976. John Ray, 1627–1705: a bibliography 1660–1970. Van Heusden, Amsterdam.
- ^ a b c d Raven, Charles E. 1942. John Ray, naturalist: his life and works. Cambridge.
- ^ Newton, Alfred 1893. Dictionary of birds. Black, London
- ^ Bowler P.J. 2003. Evolution: the history of an idea. 3rd ed, California.
- ^ Hooke, Robert 1705. The posthumous works of Robert Hooke. London. repr. 1969 Johnson N.Y.
- ^ The Ray Society. Retrieved 7 May 2013
- ^ "John Ray Society". St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Retrieved 7 May 2013.
Other sources
- Raven, Charles E. 1950: John Ray, naturalist: his life and works
- Ray, John 1686: Historia plantarum species, etc. 3 vols. Vol. I. Londini: Clark.
- Ray, John 1713a: Synopsis methodica avium & piscium: opus posthumum, etc. (vol. 1: Avium) [in Latin]. William Innys, London. Digitized version
- Ray, John 1713b: Synopsis methodica avium & piscium: opus posthumum, etc. (vol. 2: Piscium) [in Latin]. William Innys, London. Digitized version
External links
- The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation by John Ray, the seventh edition, corrected, London: printed by R. Harbin, for William Innys, at the Prince’s-Arms in St Paul’s Church Yard, 1717. (First edition, 1691)
- Synopsis methodica avium (also on The Internet Archive) and Synopsis methodica piscium at Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum
- The John Ray Initiative: connecting Environment and Christianity
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- A preliminary English translation of John Ray's Methodus plantarum nova (1682)
- A preliminary English translation of John Ray's Dissertatio de variis methodis
- John Ray Biography (UCMP Berkeley)
- The first biological species concept (Evolving Thoughts)
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