"If I can see further than others, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants."

The matter has to be sent from Newton to a letter from the Royal Academy of Sciences. Starting from the paper "Theory of Light and Colors". In this optical treatise, Newton reported his experimental results in optical research and proposed the famous particle theory of light. This article aroused strong doubts from Hook, a scientist responsible for reviewing the paper at the Academy of Sciences at the time. This Hook is familiar to everyone. He is the one who invented the microscope and proposed that the tension of a spring is proportional to its elongation. This man is also a genius. Unlike Newton, he has a broad knowledge but no expertise. He has dabbled in astronomy, geology, optics, botany, and anatomy. In his monograph "Micrographia", he believed that light is a wave. Coupled with his strong competitiveness, he hated Newton's particle theory. From then on, the two met and became enemies, and began a thirty-year feud. This is a matter of 1672.

In the initial battle, the two people won each other's battle, because the particle theory and wave theory of light could only be a hypothesis at the time. The difference was that Newton paid more attention to verification through experiments, while other scientists It's just that Chen was immersed in speculation. By 1975, Newton had perfected his light particle hypothesis in two papers, "An Hypothesis Explaining the Properties of Light" and "Discourse of Obervations". The second article aroused great indignation in Hooke. He believed that Newton was inspired by his "Micrographia". What was even more unforgivable was that he believed that Newton was using his ideas to explain the incompatible theory of fluctuations. Particles say! For Newton, he was very clear about Hooke's work. It was inevitable that some ideas came from "Micrographia", but his personality decided that it was impossible to publicly praise Hooke, because in Newton's view, any A hypothesis must be proven correct by experiments before it can become a theory, rather than relying on conjecture. However, scientists in the 17th century regarded "Reasoning" as the origin of science, and Hooke was a supporter of this idea. He listed a Newton despised making piles of conjectures to explain phenomena without verification. Zhongan Forum | Zhongan Blog

In order to express his anger, Hook wrote a letter to Newton. In Europe at that time, no matter how angry gentlemen were in their personal letters, they had to be generous and polite. They clearly hated the other party but still wrote some disgusting words. The dissatisfaction could only be shown between the lines. Hence Hooke's letter: "I absolutely appreciate your wonderful paper and am extremely pleased to see you expanding on the work I started because I didn't have time. I'm sure you've gone above and beyond what I've done. And I believe there is probably no equal in any field like you who has actually done and corrected my crude work which I should have done..." Hook here. It was polite, but the meaning was clear: Newton was inspired to start his work. F1F e3C G q0Q0K

Newton's reply was equally interesting, "The last thing I want to see in the field of philosophy is an argument, let alone an argument on paper...between friends. Personal correspondence was more about mentoring than arguing, and I believe we are an example of this. "Then here's a quote that's been around for hundreds of years," What Descartes did was a good step. you have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colors of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants." ([About Optics] Descartes took a good step forward, and you are right in many ways. It has done a lot to enrich, especially the introduction of thinking about the color of thin plates into philosophy. If I can see further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants like you)

Newton's surface here. Although Hook is praised as a "giant", he is actually mocking Hook. Not only because Hooke's achievements in optics cannot be called a giant, but also because everyone knows that Hooke was short in stature and may have a hunchback. In Newton's words, "Is the most and promise the least of any man in the world I" ever saw". It turned out that this Cambridge University professor who had not yet published "The Principia" and had just gained some fame had no intention of being modest at all, and he would not have thought that this sentence to ridicule his old rival would be hung as a motto in the classroom by future generations of primary school students.