What does it mean by 'standing on the shoulders of giants' as is written on some UK £2 coins?

Answer 1

The metaphor of dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants (Latin:nanos gigantium humeris insidentes) is first recorded in the twelfth century and attributed to Bernard of Chartres. It was famously used by the seventeenth-century scientist Isaac Newton who wrote it as: Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident (see below).

[edit] Attribution and meaning
The attribution to Bernard is due to John of Salisbury. In 1159, John wrote in his Metalogicon:

"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size."
("Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvenimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea")
According to medieval historian Richard Southern, Bernard is comparing the modern scholar (12th century) to the ancient scholars of Greece and Rome:[1]

[The phrase] sums up the quality of the cathedral schools in the history of learning, and indeed characterizes the age which opened with Gerbert (950-1003) and Fulbert (960-1028) and closed in the first quarter of the 12th century with Peter Abelard. [The phrase] is not a great claim; neither, however, is it an example of abasement before the shrine of antiquity. It is a very shrewd and just remark, and the important and original point was the dwarf could see a little further than the giant. That this was possible was above all due to the cathedral schools with their lack of a well-rooted tradition and their freedom from a clearly defined routine of study.

[edit] References during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What does it mean by 'standing on the shoulders of giants' as is written on some UK £2 coins?

Answer 3

Nanos Gigantium Humeris Insidentes

Answer 4

Newton used it to pay tribute to all the scientists who had gone before. But also to make a masked attack on one of his contemporaries This man was said to be small in stature, almost a dwarf, and Newton was saying he'd got no help from him or his work.

Answer 5

from 24carat.co.uk:
This British coin carries the inscription:-
STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
on its edge.
"The edge inscription encapsulates perfectly the essence of the reverse design, and has been taken from a letter written by Isaac Newton to fellow scientist Robert Hooke on 5th. February 1676, where he very modestly claimed that his success had been built on the achievement of others: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"".

Answer 6

Probably because Issac Newton said it.

Answer 7

this explains it...

"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."

Answer 8

They pinched it off the Oasis album cover.

Answer 9

My favourite motto where ever it comes from.

Answer 10

I remember a quote that goes something like "blank blank and Carry a big stick"..I think that they were refering to the giant as a world leader and his big stick....like babe and the blue ox....