Richard Watson (bishop of Llandaff)

Richard Watson (August 1737 – 4 July 1816) was an Anglican bishop and academic, who served as the Bishop of Llandaff from 1782 to 1816. Quotes If it be asked what are the discriminative characteristics of minerals, vegetables, and animals, as opposed to one another, I plainly answer that I do not know any, either from natural history or chemistry, which can wholly be relied upon. Systematic distinctions and specific divisions of things are useful in enlarging the comprehension of the mind. By methodizing the objects, they seem to extend the boundaries of knowledge; but having no real foundation in nature, they should not be depended on too far; they often perplex or impede the progress of a curious enquirer. This prepossession in favour of systematic arrangements, operates the more forcibly upon us as the ideas to which it is usually annexed become the more abstracted. The strongest analogies are overlooked, the plainest reasonings thought fallacious, and decisive experiments inconclusive, when their tendency is to subvert a distinction of which we had wrongly supposed Nature herself the author. Every one thinks he knows what an animal is, and how it is contradistinguished from a vegetable; and would be offended at having his knowledge questioned thereupon. A dog or a horse, he is truly persuaded, are beings as clearly distinguished from an herb or a tree, as light is from darkness; yet as in these, so in the production of nature, the transition from one to the other is effected by imperceptible gradations. Naturalists as well as Chymists have perhaps too precipitately embraced the opinion, that minerals may be certainly and readily distinguished from the other two kingdoms. A vascular system, a nutritive succus, and a power of producing its like, constitute the abstract idea both of a vegetable and an animal as contradistinguished from a mineral: this idea is clear and definite in itself; but to determine how far the coexistence of these qualities is in the nature of things necessary, or where any of them ceases to exist, is a question of vast difficulty, when applied to particular cases. Stones dug out of quarries, ores out of mines, in general minerals separated from their matrices, are like the dead branches or limbs of vegetables or animals, incapable of receiving increase, except from an external incrustation; but whether the matrices themselves increase, or, that being in some cases granted, whether they receive their augmentation from an external apposition, or an internal assimilation and extention of parts, cannot readily be decided either way.In the Cretan Labyrinth it hath been observed, that the names of travellers, which have been cut in the rock in former ages, are now in alto relievo; and the older the dates are, the greater is the protuberance, resembling the callus formed by the incisions in trees. In the mines in Chremnitz, in Hungary, which have been wrought for above one thousand years, the ancient roads which had been cut through the rocks are left to grow up; and it is remarked that they approach one another in an horizontal and not in a perpendicular direction. The same phenomenon may be observed in the marble quarries in Italy, as is mentioned by Baglivy, in his Treatise upon the Vegetation of Stones: but whether these, and many similar appearances, are to be attributed to the pressure of the superincumbent strata, or to a kind of vegetable growth, is a doubtful point. Rock-crystal, amethysts, and various precious stones have been thought by De Boot to grow like mushrooms. Certain it is that they often contain in them several heterogeneous particles: a circumstance which proves them to have been once in a fluid state, and induces a suspicion, that in their formation they may resemble the gums and resins extravasated from various species of vegetables. The vegetation of stones hath been admitted by many; and some have contended that minerals, as well as animals and vegetables, spring from seed; the greatest being nothing but the expansion of the parts of a minute grain of sand. . . .Many minerals seem in their formation to have been antecedent, others subsequent to the universal deluge. A great part of the matter constituting the outward shell of the earth (the only part which we can examine) hath been subservient to vegetable or animal life. All the strata of limestones, chalks, marbles, all gypsums, spars, alabasters, &c. are confessedly of animal origin. The strata of pit-coal and of all bituminous fossils, of some species of slates, whatever may be thought of argillaceous strata in general, the mould everywhere covering the surface of the earth and other substances, are supposed probably enough to have arisen from the destruction of vegetables; so that I know not whether it would be a very extravagant conjecture which should suppose that all matter is, or has been, organized, enlivened, animated. Essay on Chemistry, as quoted in Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, &c. (1799), pt. 1, pp. 7–10 External links Category:Anglican bishops Category:Theologians from England Category:Chemists from England Category:University of Cambridge alumni Category:1737 births Category:1816 deaths