(3089/898) Standing on the shoulders

799) We are like dwarfs standing upon the shoulders of giants, and so able to see more and see farther than the ancients.

Bernard of Chartres (c.1130)
quoted by John of Salisbury in
The Matalogicon (1159)

800) If I have seen farther than [others] it is by was standing on the shoulders of Giants.

Sir Isaac Newton
letter to Robert Hooke (2/5/1675) [B16]

[Note: Bernard of Chartres appears to be the first known use of this metaphor, and Isaac Newton's is the most famous, but it's was used with some frequency by savants of the Middle Ages and Renaissance:

Dwarfs on the shoulders of giants see further than the giants themselves.

Didacus Stella
Eximii verbi divini Concionatoris Ordinnis Minorum Regularis Observantiae (1622)

I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.

Robert Burton
The Anatomy of Melancholy 1621-1651

A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two.

George Herbert Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Further information can be found at this website, on Wikipedia, and in On The Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript (1965) by Robert K. Merton]

801) In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

Gerald Holton (widely attributed)
posted by Todd E. Van Hoosear [UAQ] (4/25/95)

802) If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.

Jeff Goll
(usually attributed to mathematician Hal Abelson,
Goll's roommate in college) [WP]

803) [O]ne of my major complaints about the computer field is that whereas Newton could say, "If I have seen a little farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants," I am forced to say, "Today we stand on each other's feet." Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation where we build on top of the work of others rather than redoing so much of it in a trivially different way. Science is supposed to be cumulative, not almost endless duplication of the same kind of things.

Richard Hamming
"One Man's View of Computer Science"
Turing Award lecture (1968) [WP]

804) No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Terry Pratchett
Reaper Man
posted by Todd E. Van Hoosear [UAQ] (4/25/95)

805) There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

James Thurber (widely attributed)
posted by Todd E. Van Hoosear [UAQ] (4/25/95)

Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)
[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup
[WQ] - Wikipedia


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 668 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.