Question regarding Newton's famous lineIf I have seen farther, it is by standing ...giants"

[davidmich]

Hi,
I’ve always wondered in what vein Newton’s wrote his now famous line “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” to Robert Hooke (whom he considered an opponent of his work).

In what spirit was this now famous line written? Was it genuine modesty, feigned modesty? Was it a backhanded compliment to Hook? On page 64 of Peter Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series “Newton”, the author writes right after quoting the line " It may be unfair to note here that Hooke was of small and somewhat crooked stature".
I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich

[ElvisL1ves]

It may go back further.

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.
John of Salisbury, Metalogicon (1159)

I like these two:

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

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

[dasmoocher]

IIRC, this was a dig by Newton towards Hooke:

While many believe that was the sentiment being expressed by Newton in his letter to Hooke, some researchers have suggested he was actually using the phrase “on the shoulders of giants” as a veiled insult of Robert Hooke, who was a rather short man. Newton had a reputation as a petty and vindictive man whose ego clashed with those of his rivals in the scientific and mathematical communities. One of these rivals was Robert Hooke, who had been in a long-running feud with Newton over which one had discovered the inverse square law. Although Newton’s letter to Hooke appeared courteous on the surface, some historians have concluded he cleverly employed the phrase “on the shoulders of giants” to ridicule Hooke’s lack of physical stature and imply that he lacked intellectual stature as well.

[Simplicio]

Probably wasn’t meant as a slight against Hooke. I can’t find an online copy of the letter now, but its generally friendly, and Hooke and Newton wouldn’t have their falling out till several years later.

And as noted, it was a common expression at the time, and Newton was just acknowledging Hooke and Descartes contributions to his findings.

[sbunny8]

@davidmich

Hi,
I’ve always wondered in what vein Newton’s wrote his now famous line “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” to Robert Hooke (whom he considered an opponent of his work).

In what spirit was this now famous line written? Was it genuine modesty, feigned modesty? Was it a backhanded compliment to Hook? On page 64 of Peter Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series “Newton”, the author writes right after quoting the line " It may be unfair to note here that Hooke was of small and somewhat crooked stature".
I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich

It was a multi-layered pun. The book in question was about optics (…seen farther…) and Hooke was short (…shoulders of giants…) but mostly it was a clever way of giving Hooke a compliment about him being an intellectual giant while still maintaining that Newton didn’t steal his work.

Imagine that I started a band and went on tour playing songs that sound an awful lot like Beatles tunes but slightly different and I refused to pay royalties. Then I could defend myself by saying “Hey I fully admit that there’s no way I could have written such great songs like the ones I wrote if it weren’t for the fact that I grew up listening to The Beatles, the best rock band of the 20th century.” But the hidden statement there is that I’m still claiming that I wrote my own songs.

By the way, Newton didn’t come up with that expression, standing on the shoulders of giants. It appeared in print many years before Newton said it.

[Colibri]

@ElvisL1ves

I like these two:

Quote:
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
Gerald Holton

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

My favorite version is:

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.

• Murray Gell-Mann

[Simplicio]

I still can’t find the text of the letter, but this post gives the relevant passage and the context. The writer of the site reiterates what I said above, the letter is pretty conciliatory for the sentence to be read as an insult.

And the site also notes that when Newton actually was angry at people, he usually went onto full-on asshole mode. Veiled slights weren’t really his thing.

[Thudlow_Boink]

In this ten-minute video, William Dunham (author of Journey Through Genius and other popular math books) discusses Newton in general and the “shoulders of giants” line in particular.

[dasmoocher]

@Simplicio

I still can’t find the text of the letter, but this post gives the relevant passage and the context. The writer of the site reiterates what I said above, the letter is pretty conciliatory for the sentence to be read as an insult.

And the site also notes that when Newton actually was angry at people, he usually went onto full-on asshole mode. Veiled slights weren’t really his thing.

I heard the story in high school physics, so it looks like my teacher may have had it wrong. The"shoulder of giants" letter seems to date from 1675 or 1676, and it looks like the feud started with the publication of the Principia:

In 1686, when the first book of Newton’s Principia was presented to the Royal Society, Hooke claimed that Newton had obtained from him the “notion” of “the rule of the decrease of Gravity, being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the Center”. At the same time (according to Edmond Halley’s contemporary report) Hooke agreed that “the Demonstration of the Curves generated therby” was wholly Newton’s.[70]

A recent assessment about the early history of the inverse square law is that “by the late 1660s,” the assumption of an “inverse proportion between gravity and the square of distance was rather common and had been advanced by a number of different people for different reasons”.[75] Newton himself had shown in the 1660s that for planetary motion under a circular assumption, force in the radial direction had an inverse-square relation with distance from the center.[65] Newton, faced in May 1686 with Hooke’s claim on the inverse square law, denied that Hooke was to be credited as author of the idea, giving reasons including the citation of prior work by others before Hooke.[70] Newton also firmly claimed that even if it had happened that he had first heard of the inverse square proportion from Hooke, which it had not, he would still have some rights to it in view of his mathematical developments and demonstrations, which enabled observations to be relied on as evidence of its accuracy, while Hooke, without mathematical demonstrations and evidence in favour of the supposition, could only guess (according to Newton) that it was approximately valid “at great distances from the center”.[70]

[Smeghead]

I’ve always like the notion of it being a none-too-subtle slap at Hooke, given that Newton was his age’s version of an internet troll.

[Hari_Seldon]

I once started to read (but abandoned it as boring) a book giving the entire history of the phrase before Newton. See http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/. But it has a long history.

[septimus]

@Simplicio

I still can’t find the text of the letter, but this post gives the relevant passage and the context. The writer of the site reiterates what I said above, the letter is pretty conciliatory for the sentence to be read as an insult.

And the site also notes that when Newton actually was angry at people, he usually went onto full-on asshole mode. Veiled slights weren’t really his thing.

Thank you for the link. I’ve always been confused by claims that Newton was nasty, and your cite seems to refute that in this one instance. You say the site does show Newton assholeisms. Examples?

I realize that England and the Continent developed a silly feud over the priority of calculus discovery, and that Newton was eventually drawn into that feud. However Newton and Leibniz themselves had great mutual respect for each other’s abilities.

[davidmich]

According to Peter Ackroy’s book “Newton” the Newton’s dislike for Hook dates before his “Principia” to 1675, which is when he wrote those famous lines to Hook. p. 64. He stopped his correspondence with Hook thereafter. He began writing his Principia in about 1684. "The Book of the Principles was writ in about 17 or 18 months, whereof about two months were taken up with journeys, & the MS was sent to the RS in the Spring of 1686"p. 79

[KarlGauss]

@Colibri

My favorite version is:

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.

• Murray Gell-Mann

Beat me to it! One of my all-time favourite lines. In fact, it used to be my sig on these Boards.

[dasmoocher]

@davidmich

According to Peter Ackroy’s book “Newton” the Newton’s dislike for Hook dates before his “Principia” to 1675, which is when he wrote those famous lines to Hook. p. 64. He stopped his correspondence with Hook thereafter. He began writing his Principia in about 1684. "The Book of the Principles was writ in about 17 or 18 months, whereof about two months were taken up with journeys, & the MS was sent to the RS in the Spring of 1686"p. 79

This thread made me curious and I found this blog about Newton’s 1671/72 paper:

Very few people, however, appreciate the fact that science historians credit his 1671/72 journal publication, titled a New Theory About Light and Colors, as the first true example of what is now referred to as a “scientific paper.”
…

Right on the heels of that paper – his very first scientific publication – came his second, an account of his reflecting telescope – also in the society’s Philosophical Transactions.
…

Fame Brings Storm Clouds for Newton:
Enter Robert Hooke, Newton’s Lifelong Adversary

Newton’s uncharacteristic euphoria over the initial reception accorded him and his telescope by the Royal Society was short-lived. One of the charter members of the prestigious scientific society which was founded in 1662 under King Charles, the Second, came forth to challenge Newton’s paper on light and colors. Robert Hooke, an acknowledged expert on optical science, began an exchange of letters with Newton which finally caused Newton, in considerable frustration, to abandon all such scientific correspondence with people he considered to be incorrigibly “uninformed” or devious – with Hooke at the head of the list. Hooke was to remain there until the end – literally.

Another quote from the blog.

Hooke had crossed paths with Newton years earlier over the subject of optics and light. Their correspondence on those matters had been hostile, prompting Newton to generally avoid Hooke when possible during the intervening years.

[Dead_Cat]

@dasmoocher

IIRC, this was a dig by Newton towards Hooke:

@sbunny8

It was a multi-layered pun. The book in question was about optics (…seen farther…) and Hooke was short (…shoulders of giants…) but mostly it was a clever way of giving Hooke a compliment about him being an intellectual giant while still maintaining that Newton didn’t steal his work.

No disrespect to either of you, as you are clearly better-versed on this subject than I am, but I lean towards this being a classic case of people reading an inference that was not intended by the writer. I know Occam’s Razor isn’t a rigorous scientific principle, but it seems appropriate to use it here.

It’s a bit like readers ascribing various meanings to Douglas Adams choosing “42” as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Entertaining as some of the theories are, however much they seem to fit, the author himself stated that he intended no hidden meaning, he just picked a number. Not at random, though - in one interview he was quoted as saying 42 was “the funniest 2-digit number”, in another he said he wanted it to be an ordinary number (not “funny” like 17 and three quarters, not prime, not even odd) because that would ruin the big joke by putting a weak joke in the middle of it. Personally I like the second explanation, but just like with Newton, now we’ll never know for sure.