The phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" is a metaphor which means "using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress".
"Our elders, in higher life and study, had the appearance of the giant with the commanding body; We can, through ardor, equal them, if we scrutinize their teachings with good sense." (c. 1410)
An illustration of New Testament evangelists on the shoulders of Old Testament prophets, looking up at the Messiah (from the south rose window of Chartres Cathedral)
The quote is most often attributed to Sir Isaac Newton in a letter to his rival, Robert Hooke
Cedalion on Orion's shoulders in a 1658 painting by Nicolas Poussin
Isaac Newton
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Sir Isaac Newton was an English polymath who was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author and inventor. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenm
Portrait of Isaac Newton, 1689
Some of the figures added by Isaac Newton in his 1672 and 1681 editions of the Geographia Generalis. These figures appeared in subsequent editions as well.
Newton in 1702 by Godfrey Kneller
A replica of the reflecting telescope Newton presented to the Royal Society in 1672 (the first one he made in 1668 was loaned to an instrument maker but there is no further record of what happened to it).