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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shouldersThat phrase has a nice resonance to it, but that is not at all
of Giants."
what Newton intended when he wrote it. It is part of a letter
that Newton wrote to Hooke, under duress, when the leaders of
the Royal Society decided that the feud between the two was
damaging the Society. The single sentence is taken out of
context. When the context is included one realizes that it is,
rather than a compliment, a condescending reference to Hooke's
short stature, and the rest of the paragraph damns Hooke with
faint praise.