Standing on the shoulders of giants
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- For other uses of this quote-cum-metaphor, see Standing on the shoulders of giants (disambiguation).
The metaphor of dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants (Latin: Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident) is first recorded in the twelfth century and attributed to Bernard of Chartres. It is often mistakenly attributed to the seventeenth-century scientist Isaac Newton (see below).
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[edit] Original attribution
The attribution to Bernard is due to John of Salisbury. In 1159, John wrote in his Metalogicon:
"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness on sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size."
The thirteenth-century stained glass of Chartres Cathedral's south transept may also be influenced by the metaphor. The tall windows under the Rose Window show four major Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel as gigantic figures and the four New Testament evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as sitting on their shoulders. The evangelists, though smaller, "see more" than the larger Old Testament prophets in that they see the Messiah about whom the prophets spoke.
[edit] References during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries
Didacus Stella took up the quote in the sixteenth century; by the seventeenth century it had become commonplace. Robert Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621-51), quotes Didacus Stella thus:
"I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself."
Later editors of Burton misattributed the quote to Lucan; in their hands Burton's attribution Didacus Stella, in luc 10, tom. ii "Didacus on the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10; volume 2" became a reference to Lucan's Pharsalia 2.10. No reference or allusion to the quote is found there.
Later in the seventeenth century, George Herbert, in his Jacula Prudentum (1651), wrote "A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two" and Isaac Newton famously remarked in a letter to his rival Robert Hooke dated February 5, 1676 that:
"What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
This has been interpreted as a sarcastic remark directed against Hooke. This is somewhat speculative: Hooke and Newton had exchanged many letters in tones of mutual regard, and Hooke was not of particularly short stature, although he was of slight build and had been afflicted from his youth with a severe stoop.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in The Friend (1828), wrote:
"The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on."
[edit] Contemporary references
- After seeing the inscription on a £2 coin, Noel Gallagher of British band Oasis decided to name their fourth studio album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants [sic]. The phrase also appears in the song King of Birds by the U.S. rock band R.E.M. as the lyric "...standing on the shoulders of giants / leaves me cold."
- The phrase is used by the major figure in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose, William of Baskerville.
- Google Scholar has adopted "Stand on the shoulders of giants" as its motto.
- MIT professor Hal Abelson is credited with the quip "If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders." Abelson himself attributes it to his Princeton University roommate, Jeff Goll[citation needed].
- On the Shoulders of Giants is a collection of works by the major scientists Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, all compiled by Stephen Hawking. In his introduction, Hawking addresses Newton's famous version of the quotation above.
- Richard Hamming, in his 1968 Turing Award lecture, One Man's View of Computer Science, said:
"Indeed, one 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".
- In Jay-Z's song "Hovi Baby" off of The Blueprint 2 CD1 he says,
"They say a midget standin on the giant's shoulder can see much further than the giant.. (the giant..) So I got the WHOLE rap world on my shoulder they tryin to see further than I am.. (than I am..)"
[edit] Further reading
- Robert K. Merton, On The Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript, Free Press (1965).
