Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
“
Nullius in verba”
is the motto of the Royal Society, the premier body of sci-
entists in Britain, founded in 1660. Other countries have similar bodies of leading
scientists, called National Academies. The literal translation of this motto is “not
in words”. This motto encapsulates the view that you should base your beliefs on
your own assessment of the best available evidence and not take anyone's word for
it. So there is no room for dogma or for an appeal to authority, tradition or ancient
texts - this is a major difference from how supernaturalism operates. This difference
between supernaturalism and naturalism can be summarised by saying that, while
supernaturalism has authorities who make assertions, naturalism has experts who
are familiar with the best available evidence.
But now we have to ask - where is the best available evidence to be found? The
answer is that the best available evidence is available in the peer-reviewed literature.
Figure 2.2 explains what this means. When a scientist, or more likely these days, a
group of scientists, feel that they have made some new observations or arrived at
Fig. 2.2
some novel insights about some aspect of the natural world from their experiments,
they write down what they have done in enough detail for other scientists familiar
with the field to be able to repeat the observations and experiments.
The main reason for doing this is to ensure that the observations are reliable, in
the sense that they can be repeated by other, independent scientists. The completed
writing is referred to as a manuscript or paper, and this is submitted to a learned
journal that specialises in the appropriate branch of science. The journal editor sends