The Wilkins Lecture, 1985 John Wilkins, John Ray and Carl Linnaeus

As a botanical taxonomist I was naturally highly honoured and much surprised lito be invited by this venerable and exclusive Society to deliver the 1985 Wilkins Lecture on a subject related to the history of science. If this were a sermon, there could be no Biblical text more appropriate for the present occasion dealing with Bishop Wilkins and his contemporaries in the Royal Society than a passage from the book of wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, composed in the second century B.C.: ‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning. . . leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions. . . There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.’ So be it with particular respect to John Wilkins (1614—72), in whose commemoration the triennial Wilkins Lecture was founded in 1947.