Nullius in verba: the motto of the Royal Society

Nullius in verba (“take nobody’s word for it”) is the motto of the Royal Society, and as they explain, is “an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.” At first glance, this motto is wildly hypocritical: why then does the Royal Society promote meetings and lectures? Why does it publish journals? It’s true that back in its early days (the 17th century), one could do actual science at a meeting. You could turn up with a new type of telescope, microscope or prism and demonstrate its use then and there. Such things are hardly possible now: modern science is a vast body of knowledge, derived from thousands of years of observations, these days done with equipment that few of us will ever even see. The distrust expressed by the motto seems appropriate for our sceptical age, where people assume that scientists have been bought or inhabit nothing but an elaborate belief…