On the Shoulders of Giants – The Post–Italianate Edition
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A01=Robert K. Merton
Author_Robert K. Merton
Category=CFA
Category=CFG
Category=JBCC9
Category=PD
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eq_dictionaries-language-reference
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Product details
- ISBN 9780226520865
- Weight: 462g
- Dimensions: 144 x 215mm
- Publication Date: 15 May 1993
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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With playfulness and a large dose of wit, Robert Merton traces the origin of Newton's aphorism, "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Using as a model the discursive and digressive style of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Merton presents a whimsical yet scholarly work which deals with the questions of creativity, tradition, plagiarism, the transmission of knowledge, and the concept of progress. "This book is the delightful apotheosis of donmanship: Merton parodies scholarliness while being faultlessly scholarly; he scourges pedantry while brandishing his own abstruse learning on every page. The most recondite and obscure scholarly squabbles are transmuted into the material of comedy as the ostensible subject is shouldered to one side by yet another hobby horse from Merton's densely populated stable. He has created a jeu d'esprit which is profoundly suggestive both in detail and as a whole."--Sean French, Times Literary Supplement
