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Comment by gruseom | Hacker News Reader

I highly doubt Newton said that. That's a modern, post-romantic way of thinking. Moreover, it would have been hugely impolite in the 17th century.

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As far as I can tell, ~100% of the (many) references to that quote can be traced to Richard Hamming's 1986 lecture, "You And Your Research" (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html), which includes that quote and attributes it to Newton (but without a specific citation). I'd be curious where Hamming got it from, since I'm not able to find either that exact quote or anything similar quoted by anybody pre-1986 (even as an apocryphal/uncited quote), at least from some brief Google Books and Lexis-Nexis digging.

Good digging. Hamming doesn't seem the kind of guy who would just make that up. Perhaps it's a paraphrase of something Newton did say.

You highly doubt a revolutionary figure said a radical thing because it would have been considered impolite/revolutionary/radical?

Newton was in a world of his own; he, along with a few select others (Lock, Descartes and others), are in large part responsible for the Enlightenment. The very Enlightenment this statement characterizes so well. Even if he didn't say it (I cannot find the source, but I have read this quote a number of times in various papers), it is very much the kind of statement he would make.

Newton was a strange mix of the modern and the ancient. Remember that he devoted most of his working life to compiling a chronology of the old Testament and to summarising various alchemical works. See Westfall's biography Never at Rest.

No, it isn't, for the same reason Newton didn't wear his hair like Elvis. No one invents his own culture. This has nothing to do with how radical Newton's ideas were or how great a genius he was. It has to do with what cultural forms existed at the time. You have to get to figures like Byron before this kind of statement makes sense (and my bet is that this one comes from later even than that).

However, I'm no scholar of the 17th century. Prove me wrong. If Newton said something that sensational, it won't be hard to track down. I didn't search for it like I usually do before making these claims, so your job should be easy.

Hard work as a means to success is hardly a post-romantic invention. Newton was very much a student of Aristotle, the teachings of whom we can see very much aligned with the statement in question.

In that light, would you also doubt these verified Newtonian quotes that suggest similar thinking? "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." "If I am anything, which I highly doubt, I have made myself so by hard work."

The first quote is proverbial, and Newton certainly said it, but the phrase dates from the 12th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_gi...) and is not part of Enlightenment tradition. Quite the opposite, in fact: it comes from the medieval tradition of abasing yourself before the ancients. So no, it doesn't resemble the disputed quote at all.

The second is not familiar to me, but it is 17th century language and does sound like something Newton would say. But it's irrelevant here. He's talking about nature, not himself.

The third is much closer to the disputed quote. But I don't believe Newton said this either. You know who said things like that? Horatio Alger. So let's see a textual source in Newton's works before accepting it as evidence.

Here's a helpful trick. When you Google a quote and the first page consists entirely of junk like this:

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=h...

... that's a sign that the quote is bogus.

I looked for the "sign that the quote is bogus" but missed it. Maybe results that have 5 million hits are bogus? Maybe results that have relevant links are bogus? I can enter all sorts of valid quotes from both current and historic figures into Google, and obtain very similar results. ("Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You", "A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be", "A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.") I fail to see how that adds anything to the discussion. Neither do I see how the fact that Newton restated, rather than originated, a particular idea, helps your argument.

Also, please inform me as to how this statement relates to Lord Byron. Nothing I've read of Byron would favor him as the statement's originator over Newton. I can't help but think of this scene from Good Will Hunting when I read your replies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsHLkB8u3s&t=1m56s

Hey, this isn't a competition. We're just talking about an interesting historical question.

Maybe one point deserves clarification.

When you Google an authentic quote by a very famous person, a precise textual citation is usually locatable through one of the top results (or something it links to). Therefore, when you Google a quote by a very famous person and nothing but quotespam sites come up, the quote is probably bogus.

I've never seen an authentic quote that fails this test. If anyone can find one -- that is, find a quote by a very famous person, the first page of Google results for which is all quotespam, but which nevertheless is an authentic quote as proven by a real textual reference -- I would like to see it.

Searching books.google.com for the quote is very useful too.

Indeed it is, especially with the inauthor tag, as in:

  inauthor:"Isaac Newton"

Google Books is an amazing resource. Would there were a way to get the full text of everything.

> If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isn't this quote Newton being typical Newton and using this well-known phrase to be particularly nasty to Hooke? (Hooke was a hunchback, so Newton is saying he did not get insight from Hooke.)

I have read a few biographies of Newton and in some Hooke is a colleague albeit competitor and in others is a much-disliked rival. I don't really know which to believe.

My understanding is that some people think that Newton meant it as a nasty swipe and others disagree. But if you've read a few biographies of Newton then you know a lot more about this then I do.

Edit: there's a hilarious story about Freud that revolves around the quote. Freud was angry that one of his acolytes - I think it was Wilhelm Stekel - had published a book in which he had presumed to modify one of the master's ideas. Stekel defended himself by saying: A dwarf standing on the head of a giant sees a little further than the giant. Freud replied: A louse on my head sees no further than I do.

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