On the shoulders of giants

[Ralph Howard]

Andrew writes


> Thomas Harberd writes:
>   . . .
> 
> > In TNOFTR Eco also puts in modern quotations.  For example, 
> > there's a bit from Wittgenstein about us being dwarves 
> > standing on the shoulders of giants which William says to 
> > Nicholas in the forge on the first day.
> 
> Wittgenstein may well have borrowed this but it was said by others
> previously, in particular a certain Dr Isaac . . .
> 


Andrew is of course correct and in fact there is an entire volume
devoted to the history of Newton's dwarf-on-the-shoulders-of-giants
aphorism: Robert K. Merton's _On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean
Postscript_ which I can recommend as a wonderfully entertaining book.
If nothing else its anther, a confessed "lifelong addict to _The Life
and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_", uses the "Shandean
method" of historical research and so the result is somewhat like a
non-fiction _Pale Fire_ with much of the best of the story in the
footnotes.

Ralph


-- 
Ralph Howard                    Phone:  (803) 777-2913 
Department of Mathematics       Fax:    (803) 777-3783 
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