Re: Keeping, and advancing in, your job

(sitting on the shoulders of giants)

If you're going to allude to a quote, be aware of the context. Newton was not being humble when he wrote that -- he was flaming Hooke (a short man). Not a good example for a thread about keeping your job. ;-)

</peeve>

The intelligent reader will judge for himself. Without examining the facts fully and fairly, there is no way of knowing whether vox populi is really vox dei, or merely vox asinorum. -- Cyrus H. Gordon

Comment on Re: Keeping, and advancing in, your job

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Re^2: Keeping, and advancing in, your job by Tanktalus (Canon) on Mar 04, 2005 at 19:31 UTC
Thank you for your educational post. I will keep this in mind for the future (I did try googling it to find more about the phrase before I used it, but did not come upon anything similar to your link). That said, just because I use "to be, or not to be" in a post that has no angst to it, or that is not suicidal, doesn't mean that those words aren't appropriate. Newton may have meant them sarcastically, with arrogance. I meant them more literally (hey, it's a great term, even if it can have many meanings). Of course, for the more arrogant among us (say, ... ME!), we may mean them more the way Newton did: building upon the work of others, we're geniuses. ;->	[reply]
Re^3: Newton and Hooke by SolidState (Scribe) on Mar 04, 2005 at 22:23 UTC
Off-topic, but since you mentioned googling for more info and failing to find the given link, here are a couple of other links I thought you would find interesting: 1. The Amazon page for the book "An Underground Education", mentioned as the source in the given link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385483767 2. The Wikipedia page on Robert Hooke. There's a section at the bottom mentioning Newton and the famous quotation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke	[reply]