Re: Living in the Past

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Cipra <cipramark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Jesse> If we see further than our ancestors it is because we stand on
Jesse> their shoulders - who said that? I associate it with T.S. Elliot.

Mark> (usually credited to Sir Issac Newton, although I think he
Mark> actually borrowed it from someone else.)

Actually, it is:

"If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the
shoulders of giants"

Newton was a genius, but not the nicest of people. See below (I guess
that the Royal Society was something like RATM BFS).

Victor

>From wikipedia:

Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton entertained a considerable mutual
dislike for each other. They fell out in 1672 when Hooke criticized
Newton's presentation showing that prisms split white light rather
than modifying it. Newton expressed fury that Hooke seemed unable to
grasp his ground-breaking discovery, and threatened to leave the Royal
Society.

Relations between the men grew worse as time progressed. In 1679,
Hooke wrote to Newton advocating an inverse square law of gravitation,
though he lacked the mathematical ability to formally prove it. When
Newton published his Principia Mathematica in 1687, including a proof
of an inverse square law, he failed to credit Hooke at all.

The famous Newton quote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on
the shoulders of giants", appeared originally in a letter to Hooke,
and Newton presumably intended it as a sarcastic remark directed
against Hooke, who had a remarkably short stature.
.

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