Nullius in verba and cited elsewhere. Nullius in verba The Royal Society website explains the motto thus: It 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. The phrase came from Horace's "Epistle" to his benefactor Maecenas, where he claims not to be devoted to any particular sect but is rather an eclectic by nature. These are the words, forming two hexameters in the original context: The minor planet known as 11059 Nulliusinverba in the asteroid belt is named after the expression. The phrase is
Mike Sutton (criminologist) to conclude that "even by the turn of the twentieth century errors in earlier measurements were readily apparent without the need to invoke decimal places." In 2014, Sutton published a non-peer reviewed e-book, "Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s Greatest Secret", alleging that Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace plagiarised the theory of natural selection from Scottish grain merchant and arboriculturist Patrick Matthew. Matthew had published "On Naval Timber and Arboriculture" in 1831, twenty-eight years before Darwin's "On the Origin of Species". Darwin biographer James Moore declared it a "non-issue", and said that "I would be extremely surprised if there was any new