'You might translate Newton's sentiments: `While I admit to building on the work of my scientific predecessors, I certainly didn't learn anything from a dwarf like you. (Newton, by the way, adapted it from a line about pygmies in a then-famous book called Anatomy of Melancholy.) 'Newton wrote a long letter to Hooke on February 5, 1675, defending himself from charges of intellectual piracy, praising Hooke for trifles, and then Newton built to the famous `standing on the shoulders of giants' line. (Hooke did in fact build the first reflecting telescope). 'Newton (1642-1727) was furious that Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was staking claim to many key discoveries in optics and calculus. 'Pundits use this quote as the ultimate expression of humility in genius, but what they miss (and almost everyone else does too) is that Newton wrote that line to a very, very, short man, a hunchbacked fellow scientist with whom he was having a bitter feud. We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. 'If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts. Quotations by Isaac Newton, English Mathematician, Born December 25, 1642. 'If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.' Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. It would be a time of peace and prosperity in his Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, Newton quotes Micah 4:3: The people will beat their swords.

The following background (From An Underground Education by Richard Zacks, p.37) might assist any translators of this quote: This contains online texts by Newton, most of them in Latin.Īfter I read this thread, it occurred to me that the original quote '.on the shoulders of giants' might have been in Latin, but it looks like it really was English. Isaac Newton - From the Colour category: For the Rays, to speak properly, have no Colour.

Isaac newton quotes