Standing on the shoulders of giants

The parable of the dwarfs on the shoulders of giants (or giants ) is an attempt to determine the ratio of the current science and culture to tradition and to the achievements of previous generations. From the perspective traditionalist scholar whose predecessors appear in previous eras as giants and themselves as dwarfs. The dwarves benefit from the pioneering achievements of the past. By adding the encountered knowledge treasure their own modest contribution, progress is made. Only in this way can extend beyond the giant dwarfs.

Origin

. Witnessed the parable is in Bernard of Chartres the first time around 1120 John of Salisbury quotes Bernhard in his finished work at 1159 Metalogicon:

" Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum umeris insidentes, ut possimus pluralistic ice remotiora et videre, non Utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea "

" Bernard of Chartres said we were, as it dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants to see more and more distant as they can -. Certainly not thanks to their own sharp eyesight or body size, but because the size of the giant uplifts us "

Even William of Conches, a pupil of Bernard, narrated and explained the metaphor in his incurred before 1123 glosses to the Institutiones grammaticae of ancient grammarian Priscian, but without mentioning Bernard as author. The impetus for the idea had a remark Priscians commanded, who wrote the authors in the field of grammar are " the younger (later ), the more astute " ( Cuius auctores quanto sunt iuniores, tanto perspicaciores ). The image of the giants and the dwarfs seems to go back to a location in the metamorphoses of ancient poet Ovid, where the philosopher Pythagoras, the assertion is placed in the mouth, he considered the irrational humanity from the shoulders of the mythical giant atlas.

With the giant Bernard said the scholars of antiquity. He did so on the one hand to express his deep admiration for the achievements of these models, but on the other hand bring modestly his conviction to advantage, that there is indeed a historical progress of knowledge, by which the presence of the past is superior (which was not self- evident at the time ).

Effect story

From the 13th century the parable spread among Jewish exegetes after Isaiah ben Elijah had taken of Trani was the first from a Christian source.

Didacus Stella took up the quote in the 16th century in a work on the evangelist Luke on: Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi Plusquam ipsi gigantes vident ( On the Shoulders of Giants Asked Pygmies see more than the giants themselves).

In the 17th century, quoted Robert Burton Didacus Stella:

" Though there were many giants of old in physics and philosophy, yet I say with Didacus Stella, " A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant june see farther than a giant himself '; I may likely add, alter, and see farther than my predecessors [ ... ]. "

" Although there were many giants of physics and philosophy earlier, I consider it with Didacus Stella ," A dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants, will continue to view it as the giant himself "; I could probably add something, modify, and see farther than my predecessors [ ... ]. "

The poet George Herbert quoted in 1640 the saying in his work Jacula prudentum.

Isaac Newton used the metaphor also:

" When I looked further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants. "

1772 attacked Johann Gottfried von Herder in his treatise on the origin of language on the metaphor back:

"Is the dwarf on the shoulders of giants is not always larger than the giant himself? "

The sociologist Robert K. Merton took up the parable in his book On the Shoulders of Giants in 1965. In the popular classics of the sociology of knowledge he traced back the citation to its origin. In his essay is, ironically, inter alia, to the social construction of "knowledge".

Umberto Eco does in the novel The Name of the Rose its main hero William of Baskerville the giant parable present ( first conversation with brother Nicolas ). At the end of the novel, William converts but resigned a quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein from that leaves the Giants seem valuable only as temporary:

" [ The scientific spirit ] Muoz gelîchesame the ladder abewerfen he sô to ir ufgestigen. "

Horst Bollard writes in his preface to his History of Philosophy, among other things:

" Hegel and Marx saw the course of history as an inevitable development. One might be tempted to apply the idea of evolution on the history of philosophy, but I do that safely too far. But well you can see how one is standing at the other 's shoulders. The later philosophers have known and learned from their ancestors, have chosen who matched their own ideas and rejected others, or have a new thought. This shows that [sic ] the thinking went into some tracks that were mapped out some of them already from antiquity here. "

Ernst Axel Knauf alludes to the parable, when he says in regard to the handling of certain problems at different times in the study of the Old Testament:

"For us today, the biblical thinking, living with contradictions, they can withstand and endure can be a useful and necessary corrective to striving for uniqueness dogmatic thinking ... Maybe we are a little better equipped than the giants of the 19th century, on whose shoulders we stand, it had to endure cultural complexity, logical and theological dilemmas, without having to remove the same literary or editorial history. "

Eric Steven Raymond transmits the parable of the hacker culture:

" The obvious parallels to the present culture of hackers [ ... ] there are very many in the academic world. [ ... ] The scientific research [ is due ] as the hacker culture on the idea [ ... ] that the participants 'on the shoulders of giants stand ', so do not always have to start from scratch to the basic principles themselves work "

In the Mennonite theologian Kurt Kerber the parable sounds to when he writes in regard to the relationship between the generations:

" [Z ] u no time the potentials and perspectives of older people were bigger than today. In them knowledge and experience on which we can not dispense bundle.

The younger of our society stand on the shoulders of their elders ... In the way they handled the images below the older generations characterize a culture that forms an important basis for believing together to hope and to love. "

Hal Abelson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a reversal of the parable is attributed. It expresses in a fun way that knowledge and science must also be questioned repeatedly to enter unknown territory and to avoid dogmas:

"If I have not seen as far as others, it is Because there were giants standing on my shoulders "

The British rock band Oasis named in 2000, an album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. This saying is also engraved on the edge of the English two -pound coin. Google Scholar, a special search engine for scientific publications, quoted the saying " On the Shoulders of Giants" on their home page.

The different uses of the parable usually are related to different assessments of the relationship between knowledge traditions. The statement may remember that scientific research is never created without history, but free is always available in front of the background knowledge. This is also known as communism knowledge of the sciences. This process is recorded and documented, which idea of what " giants " comes and what is new ( history of ideas ). Thus, the emergence of new knowledge is transparent, accountable and open to criticism.