[extropy-chat] Standing on Giants

[Brett Paatsch]

Robin Hanson wrote:

> At 02:14 AM 8/22/2005, Brett Paatsch wrote:
>>I liked the caption on James blog "If I have seen further than
>>others it is by stepping on the toes of giants".
>
> From "The Newtonian Moment Arrives for Caltech Historian", Caltech News
> 39(2):2,8,9, 2005, arrived in my mail Saturday:
>
>   [Newton] had a running conflict with another eminent British
>   scientist, Robert Hooke, ... Hooke wanted to make peace.  Newton
>   responded to his overture with a letter, in which he credited
>   Descartes's contribution to optics, acknowledged Hooke's own, valuable
>   contribution, and confessed that if he, Newton saw further than others
>   into Nature's mysteries, "it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
>
>   For centuries people have interpreted this as evidence of Newton's
>   humility, says [Caltech's Mordechai] Feingold.  "Only problem is," he
>   says, "Hooke was somewhat deformed.  So if you tell a hunchback you
>   stood on the shoulders of giants, it's not a compliment.  It's a dig."
>
>   "Newton was arrogant," says Feingold, "but it was because he new he
>   was the purveyor of the truth in so many domains that he was unwilling
>   to unable to listen to any objections or criticism.  And he was
>   willing to defend his ideas nearly to the end.  He lived a long time
>   and was basically able to bury his opposition."

A good story.

Wasn't it also Newton that said: Aristotle is my friend, Plato is my friend
but my greatest friend is truth?

Newton may have been lived a long, and useful, but lonely life. Shame
about the last, if so.

Brett Paatsch