European Journal of Surgical Oncology
Volume 34, Issue 3 , Pages 253-255, March 2008

Standing on the shoulders of giants☆

Department of Surgery, University Hospital Aintree, Lower Lane, Liverpool L9 7AL, UK

Accepted 20 July 2007.

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☆ Although the expression ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ can be accurately ascribed to Newton's 1676 letter to Hooke, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations credits Bernard of Chartres with the first usage of ‘we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they’ (pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident) in about 1130. Didacus Stella took up the quote in the sixteenth century, and Robert Burton, writing in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621–1651) quotes Stella: ‘I say with Didacus Stella, a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself’.31 It is possible that Benjamin Franklin also used it, but considerably later! Most recently the phrase appears in the song King of Birds by the US rock group REM, and is also the title of the British band Oasis' fourth album.

PII: S0748-7983(07)00519-7

doi:10.1016/j.ejso.2007.07.207

European Journal of Surgical Oncology
Volume 34, Issue 3 , Pages 253-255, March 2008

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