Dwarves on the shoulders of giants

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Representation
( southern Germany , approx. 1410)

The parable of the dwarfs on the shoulders of giants (or giants ; Latin phrase Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes , "dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants") is an attempt to establish the relationship between current science and culture and tradition and the achievements of previous generations to determine. From the point of view of tradition-conscious “ scholars ”, their predecessors appear as giants in past epochs and they themselves as “ dwarfs ” who benefit from the pioneering achievements of the past: By adding their own modest contribution to the knowledge they have found, progress is achieved. Only in this way can the dwarves tower over the giants.

origin

The parable is first attested in Bernhard von Chartres around 1120. Johannes von Salisbury quotes Bernhard in his work Metalogicon, which he finished around 1159 :

“Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum umeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea”

"Bernhard von Chartres said that we are, as it were, dwarfs who sit on the shoulders of giants in order to be able to see more and more distant things than these - of course not thanks to our own keen eyesight or body size, but because the size of the giants lifts us up."

- John of Salisbury: Metalogicon 3, 4, 47-50
Depiction of the evangelists on the shoulders of four Old Testament prophets in the south rose of Chartres Cathedral, 1st half, 13th century

Even William of Conches , a disciple of Bernard, handed down and explains the metaphor in his written before 1123 glosses to the Institutiones grammaticae of ancient grammarian Priscian , but without mentioning Bernhard as author. The idea was triggered by a remark by Priscian, who wrote that authors in the field of grammar were "the younger (later), the more astute" ( Cuius auctores quanto sunt iuniores, tanto perspicaciores ). The image of the giants and the dwarfs seems to go back to a passage in the Metamorphoses of the ancient poet Ovid , where the claim is placed in the mouth of the philosopher Pythagoras that he is looking at irrational humanity from the shoulders of the mythical giant Atlas .

By the giants, Bernhard meant the ancient scholars. On the one hand, he wanted to express his deep admiration for the achievements of these role models, but on the other hand, he wanted to show his conviction in a modest way that there is indeed a historical advance in knowledge through which the present is superior to the past (which was not a matter of course at the time).

Visually implemented, the parable appears for the first time in the south rose of Chartres Cathedral , in which four Old Testament prophets ( Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel and Daniel ) appear as giants, on whose shoulders the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), depicted on a much smaller scale ) sit.

Impact history

From the 13th century, the parable spread among Jewish exegetes after Isaiah ben Elijah of Trani was the first to adopt it from a Christian source.

Didacus Stella took up the quote in the 16th century in a work about the evangelist Luke: Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident ( pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves).

In the 17th century, Robert Burton quoted Didacus Stella:

“Though there were many giants of old in physics and philosophy, yet I say with Didacus Stella, 'A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself'; I may likely add, alter, and see farther than my predecessors [...]. "

“Although there used to be many giants in physics and philosophy, I agree with Didacus Stella:“ A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will be able to see further than the giant itself ”; I could probably add something, change something and see further than my predecessors [...]. "

- Robert Burton : Anatomy of Melancholy (1st edition 1621).

The poet George Herbert also quoted the saying in his work Jacula prudentum in 1640 .

Isaac Newton also used the metaphor:

"If I have seen further it is by standing on y e shoulders of giants."

"If I looked further, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants."

- Letter to Robert Hooke , February 5, 1676.

In 1772 Johann Gottfried von Herder resorted to the metaphor in his treatise on the origin of language :

"Isn't the dwarf on the giant's shoulders always bigger than the giant himself?"

The sociologist Robert K. Merton took up the parable in his book On the Shoulders of Giants 1965. In the popular classic of the sociology of knowledge, he traces the quote back to its origin. Ironically, in his essay, a. about the social construction of “knowledge”.

Umberto Eco has his main hero William von Baskerville recite the giant parable in the novel The Name of the Rose (first conversation with brother Nicolas). At the end of the novel, however, William resignedly modifies a quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein , which makes the giants appear only temporarily as valuable:

"[The scientific spirit] must gelîchesame throw off the ladder, if it goes to us."

In his preliminary remarks on his history of philosophy, Horst Poller writes, among other things:

“Hegel and Marx saw the course of history as an inevitable development. One might be tempted to apply the idea of ​​evolution to the history of philosophy, but that would certainly go too far. But you can see how one stands on the other's shoulders. The later philosophers knew and learned from their ancestors, selected who corresponded to their own ideas and rejected others, or came up with new ideas. It shows that the thinking ran along certain paths, some of which were already mapped out from antiquity. "

Ernst Axel Knauf alludes to the parable when he says with regard to dealing with certain problems at different times in research into the Old Testament :

"For us today, biblical thinking, which can live with contradictions, endure and endure them, can be a helpful and necessary corrective to dogmatic thinking that strives for clarity ... Perhaps we are a little better equipped than the giants of the 19th century, on whose shoulders we stand, it was to endure cultural complexity, logical and theological aporias without eliminating them in literary or editorial history . "

Eric Steven Raymond transfers the parable to the hacker culture :

"Obvious parallels to the gift culture of the hackers [...] are very many in the academic world. [...] Scientific research, like the hacker culture, [is] based on the idea [...] that the participants 'stand on the shoulders of giants', meaning that they do not have to start over and over again in order to develop the basic principles themselves "

Steven Pinker explains the material and knowledge progress with this principle:

“The economist Thomas Sowell in his Culture trilogy and the physiologist Jared Diamond in his book Poor and Rich have come to the conclusion that the key to material success lies in a large area of ​​innovation. Nobody is smart enough to make something up that everyone else will want to use. Successful innovators not only stand on the shoulders of giants, but they also commit intellectual theft on a tremendous scale, draw ideas from a huge catchment area in which tributaries pave their way. "

The Mennonite theologian Kurt Kerber echoes the parable when he writes about the relationship between the generations:

“At no time have the potential and perspectives of older people been greater than they are today. Knowledge and experience that we cannot do without are bundled in them.

The younger of our society stand on the shoulders of the elderly ... In the way they deal with the following generations, the elderly shape a culture that forms an important basis for believing, hoping and loving together. "

Peter Zimmerling explains the relationships between the various texts in the slogans from the Old Testament, New Testament and so-called third texts from hymn book songs or other, more recent texts. Here he also refers to the parable:

“The history of interpretation is an invaluable and indispensable aid to understanding the Bible today. We do not receive the Spirit of God directly, but only in conversation with the fathers and mothers of faith; H. in connection and continuation of their spiritual knowledge. Like dwarfs we stand on the shoulders of giants, which, if things go well, enables the dwarfs to look a little further than the giants. "

Markus Friedrich sums up with a clear echo of the parable :

"Because Sven Kriese has published an undoubtedly fundamental, detailed and always well-considered argumentation proceedings, on whose shoulders further questions can only be asked."

Hal Abelson , professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is credited with reversing the parable. It expresses in an amusing way that knowledge and science have to be questioned again and again in order to break new scientific ground and to avoid dogmas:

"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because there were giants standing on my shoulders"

"If I couldn't see as far as others, it was because giants stood on my shoulders."

The British rock band Oasis named an album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants in 2000 . This saying is also engraved on the rim of the English 2 pound coin . Google Scholar , a special search engine for scientific publications, quotes the saying “On the shoulders of giants” on their homepage.

The different uses of the parable are mostly related to different evaluations of the relationship between knowledge traditions. The statement can be a reminder that scientific research never arises without history, but always against the background of freely available knowledge . This is also known as the “ knowledge communism of the sciences”. In this process it is recorded and documented which ideas originate from which "giants" and which are new ( history of ideas ). This makes the creation of new knowledge transparent, traceable and criticizable.

literature

  • Walter Haug : The dwarfs on the shoulders of giants. Epochal and typological historical thinking and the problem of interference. In: Walter Haug: Structures as a key to the world. De Gruyter, Tübingen 1989, pp. 86-109.
  • Edouard Jeauneau: Nains et géants. In: Entretiens sur la renaissance du 12e siècle. Eds. Maurice de Gandillac, Edouard Jeauneau. Paris 1968, pp. 21-38.
  • Tobias Leuker: »Dwarves on the shoulders of giants«. The origins of the famous comparison. In: Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch , 32 (1997), pp. 71-76.
  • Hillel Levine: Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants. A Case Study in the Impact of Modernization on the Social Epistemology of Judaism. In: Jewish Social Studies , 40 (1978), pp. 63-72.
  • Robert K. Merton : On the shoulders of giants. A guide through the labyrinth of learning. ( On the Shoulders of Giants. A Shandean Postscript. 1965) From the American by Reinhard Kaiser. Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8108-0128-3 .
  • Albert Zimmermann : "Antiqui" and "Moderni". Awareness of tradition and awareness of progress in the late Middle Ages. De Gruyter, Berlin 1974.

Remarks

  1. John of Salisbury: Metalogicon 3, 4, 46-50, ed. John B. Hall: Ioannis Saresberiensis metalogicon. Turnhout 1991, p. 116.
  2. Leuker p. 72f.
  3. ^ Priscian: Institutiones grammaticae 1,1.
  4. Ovid: Metamorphosen 15, 143–152.
  5. Jeauneau (1968) pp. 30f.
  6. Burton's editors mistakenly believed that the quote was due to Lukan ("Civil War 2, 10"); they confused Lukan with the evangelist Luke, who is about Didacus' work.
  7. ^ Richard S. Westfall: The life of Isaac Newton . Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-521-47737-9 , p. 106.
  8. ^ Westfall Richard: Isaac Newton. A biography . Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg / Berlin / Oxford 1996, ISBN 3-8274-0040-6 , p. 143
  9. Horst Poller: The philosophers and their core ideas. A historical overview . Munich 2009, p. 7. ISBN 978-3-7892-8371-0
  10. ^ Ernst Axel Knauf: Audiatur et altera pars. On the logic of the Pentateuch editorial team . In: Bible and Church , 53, 1998, pp. 118–126, 126, ISSN  0006-0623
  11. Homesteading The Noosphere
  12. Steven Pinker: Violence. A new history of humanity . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 707
  13. Kurt Kerber: For guidance . In: Mennonite Yearbook , 110th year, 2011, p. 9.
  14. Peter Zimmerling: The solutions. A success story through the centuries . Göttingen 2014, p. 148
  15. Markus Friedrich, review of: Sven Kriese (Ed.): Archive work in and for National Socialism. The Prussian State Archives before and after the change in power in 1933 , Berlin 2015. In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History , Volume 103, 2017, pp. 144–146, 146.