Anniversary Dinner 1974: Speech by Sir Thomas Brimelow at the Anniversary Dinner, The Dorchester, 30 November 1974

Abstract

An invitation from the President of the Royal Society to speak at one of these Dinners gives pleasure and confers honour; but it also disconcerts, for the Society, by its motto of Nullius in verba , gives notice that the President and the Fellows and the Foreign Members, some of whom are present tonight, do not intend to take on trust anything that the speaker may say: which, if it were so, would be a pity, because I shall have occasion to express the gratitude and appreciation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for what the Society does in the field of its foreign relations and I should wish my words to be believed. Digressing for a moment, I am going to take advantage of this phrase Nullius in verba because a former President of the Royal Society, who was also a very distinguished classical scholar, once said that all bureaucrats of all countries should be required to speak in Esperanto; but this evening I propose to speak English. I am told by a former Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society that this motto means nothing more than ‘check the evidence’. It must be admitted that by checking the evidence and by testing the validity of propositions in the field of natural philosophy in the 314 years which have elapsed since the Society was founded, science has come a long way; to the benefit, on balance, of the greater part of mankind. Yet, at the beginning of this century, I think the Royal Society was over-optimistic about the role of science in society.