Re: What makes science powerful?

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 21:15 -0400 5/8/03, Larry Cartwright wrote:
> I believe one of the crucial elements of the power of science is our
> meticulous attention to and respect for that which has come before.
> IMHO Newton's 1676 comment to his often adversarial colleague Robert
> Hooke is still a solid cornerstone of what science is all about: "If I
> have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
That phrase has a nice resonance to it, but that is not at all 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.

After Hooke's death, Newton took over the presidency of the Royal
Society, and one of his duties, which it is said, he carried out with
meticulous attention to detail, was to supervise the Society's move
from their original quarters, which had become old and cramped, to
more spacious new quarters. Among the things to be moved were the
portraits of all the Society's members. All were safely moved except
one--Hooke's. It was never recovered.

For more detail, see John Gribbin's article "On the Shoulders of
Midgets," in the current issue of "Skeptic."

Hugh
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Hugh Haskell
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<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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