English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray

Abstract

DR. C. E. RAVEN has followed up his remarkable work on John Ray by another, equally learned, on the early English naturalists. His purpose in the latter "began as a series of biographies. But very soon it became clear that the succession of ‘lives' not only formed a very definite pattern, but that this illustrated and illuminated the progressive change in Western civilization from the medieval to the modern world." Again, "in Man‘s attitude to living nature the process of a gradual overcoming of superstition and fabulous tradition, and the development of the modern scientific spirit as a result, is significant and may be followed from man to man. . . . Little by little nonsense was recognized, fables were exploded, superstitions were unmasked ; and the world outlook built up out of these elements fell to pieces." The thesis is not a new one, nor is it one that admits of serious dispute, but Dr. Raven has brought to bear upon it a wealth of new matter, the result of prolonged and detailed critical research. These notable additions to our knowledge have been exhumed often from little-known and unpromising sources, and they enrich and distinguish the author‘s bio-biographies of such naturalists as William Turner, John Caius, Thomas Penny, Thomas Mouffet, John Gerard, Edward Topsell, John Parkinson and Thomas Johnson. Dr. Raven‘s method, however, has one drawback. It complicates what is known as documentation, and a text frequently halted by the intercalation of bibliographical detail is apt to be tedious to follow. It is better to preserve the flow of the narrative even if it involves some sacrifice of meticulosity. In a future edition we hope to see the author‘s sources collected and printed in alphabetical order at the end of the text. But however this may be, historians of biology must welcome so scholarly an addition to their studies and literature. English Naturalists from Neckam to Ray A Study of the Making of the Modern World. By the Rev. Charles E. Raven. Pp. x + 379. (Cambridge : At the University Press, 1947.) 30s. net.