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Cited by 401

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On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript.

Boulding, Kenneth E., Merton, Robert K.·1966·American Sociological Review
DOI 10.2307/2091284
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Abstract

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

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Metadata

Authors
Boulding, K. E., & Merton, R. K.
Venue
American Sociological Review
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
1966-02
Volume
31
Issue
1
Pages
104
ISSN
0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.2307/2091284
OpenAlex
W2004434228
Cited by
401
References
0
FWCI
0.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2091284
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Boulding, K. E., & Merton, R. K. (1966). On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript. American Sociological Review. https://doi.org/10.2307/2091284

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.