Friday, August 28, 2020

In a storm, I shall find my own way to a safe harbor.

From Horace, First Book of Epistles, Epistle 1 to Maecenas, line 15.

Ac ne forte roges quo me duce, quo lare tuter,

nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,

quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.


Do not venture to ask whose directions I follow,

for I am not sworn to go by the words of any teacher.

In a storm, I shall find my own way to a safe harbor.


The Royal Society, the very emblem of the Age of Enlightenment, adopted the line Nullius in Verba, take no one's word for it, as their motto.  

A more artful way of saying, question everything.  

Their more contemporary explanation 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."  They seek not the authority of the state.  Not the authority of the mob.  They seek the authority of replicated fact.  

Two millennia on and here we are.  Disinformation campaigns, gaslighting and false reporting to the left of us, to the right of us, and in front of us.  A veritable storm of fake news.  There is no safe harbor of truth other than that to which we navigate using logic, reason, and empirical evidence.  

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