John Ray

Book excerpt: Charles Raven's biography of the seventeenth-century English naturalist John Ray is one of the great works in the history of science. The author's command of Latin (the language in which all Ray's biological works were written) and his enthusiasm for natural history enabled him to interpret superbly to the modern reader John Ray's remarkable scientific work and to rescue Ray's reputation from undeserved neglect. Raven reveals the unique influence Ray had on the development of modern science and in particular explains sympathetically the key role of Ray's last, most popular and most influential work, The Wisdom of God, which was the forerunner of the great 'Darwinian' controversies between science and religion in the nineteenth century.