On the shoulders of midgets

From: Skeptic | Date: April 1, 2003| Author: | Copyright information

ONE OF THE MOST WIDELY QUOTED-and misunderstood-remarks in the history of science is Isaac Newton's famous line about "standing on the shoulders of giants." In recent years, versions of it have appeared around the edge of a British coin (appropriately, since Newton was at one time Master of the Royal Mint and was concerned about coin clipping, or shaving off the edges of coins) and in the tide of an Oasis album, for reasons which I have never quite been able to fathom but which might be a reference to the musical debt owed by Oasis to the Beades. It is widely assumed that his use of the ...

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