John Ray

Rev. John Ray (1627–1705).
The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.
London: R. Harbin for William Innys, 1717. (04138)

Known as the “father of English natural history,” the Anglican clergyman John Ray made major contributions to the classification and analysis of organisms. In The Wisdom of God, first printed in 1691 but based on sermons he preached at Cambridge in the 1660s, Ray cited numerous celestial properties, physiological adaptations, and natural laws as scientific evidence of the intelligence underlying God’s creation.