Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: Can you enlighten me about a Talmudic tale? I have a vague notion that it is something like, "Every generation stands on the shoulders of its teachers." I know I am way off, could you give me the exact aphorism, and where it originates? Amy
		A: Here's what I've found as a short answer: In a letter to Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton wrote "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." However, there's a bit more to this answer, including some interesting Jewish twists. Stephen Jay Gould explains in his essay "Sweetness and Light" (in Dinosaur in a Haystack) that Newton actually didn't invent the idea of seeing farther by standing on the shoulders of giants. A similar phrase was first spoken (at least was first spoken where anyone bothered to record the fact) by a 12th century monk named Bernard of Chartres. Apparently the image kind of hung around for a few hundred years, and became popular in Newton's time. So Newton was simply referring to a well-known idea that he assumed Hooke would also know and be sympathetic to. What's interesting, as Gould explains, is the reason that this idea of "standing on the shoulders of giants" was so popular in Newton's day. As modern science was gathering strength, proving itself more and more capable of explaining the world around us, there arose a conflict. The ancient Greek proto-scientists -- Aristotle and the gang -- were still held in great veneration. So how could modern pipsqueaks like Newton and his colleagues come along and overturn the teachings of the venerable ancients? Newton and colleagues used the "shoulders of giants" image to say that we can still venerate the ancients, even acknowledge that they were smarter than we are, and yet disagree with them and be right. According to Gould, this was part of the introduction into European culture of the idea of "progress," largely thanks to science. So what's the Jewish part of this story? Well, it turns out that the Jews had discovered progress well before Newton. (Thomas Cahill, in The Gifts of the Jews, understands the idea of progress as central to revolution in world culture that had its beginning in Abraham. But that's not exactly where I'm going.) Judaism faced this issue in the development of halakhah -- Jewish law. On the one hand, there was the doctrine of "yeridat hadorot -- the descent of the generations": all Jewish law properly originated at the revelation at Sinai, and the closer a sage was in time to that event, the better they probably remembered the authentic tradition of sinaitic law, and the more venerable they were. Moses, of course, was the most venerated of all. But on the other hand, there was a need for law to develop as circumstances and ideas changed. So, without negating the greater stature of the earlier teachers, there developed by the 11th century at the latest, the principle that when a later rabbi disagrees with an earlier one, the halakhah follows the rulings of the later teacher. While this rule doesn't apply to the very earliest sages, and there is a disagreement as to when it starts to apply, certainly after Abaye and Rava in the 4th century, the law is according to the latecomers -- in Aramaic, hilkheta kevatra'ei. How did the Jews explain the correctness of the whippersnappers in the face of the greatness of the ancients? Rabbenu ("our Rabbi") Asher ben Jehiel (1250-1327) explained it this way: "We consider the views of those later in time to have greater authority since they were aware of the reasons of the earlier authorities as well as their own." Indeed, a later rabbi is not allowed to overturn an earlier one without knowing all the positions on a particular issue that had been put forward before him/her, and understanding the reasons behind all those positions. But with this knowledge, we assume that the later sage's decision to change a law is correct. Isaiah ben Mali di Trani (b. 1200), who was completely unafraid to oppose the rulings of the great sages of previous generations, explained the matter in terms of a parable that his student Zedekiah ben Abraham Anav, claims he learned from the "gentile sages." He writes in one of his teshuvot (for the definition of teshuvot, see the bottom of this page where I explain "shoot"): The sages of the philosophers asked the greatest among them: "Do we not admit that the prior [sages] were wiser and more intelligent than us? But do we not also admit that we speak about them and contradict their words in many places, and the truth is with us? How can this be?" He answered, and said to them: "Who sees farther? The dwarf or the giant? You must conclude that it is the giant, for his eyes are higher than the [rest of] the people. But if you have the dwarf ride on the neck of the giant, who sees farther? You must conclude that it is the dwarf, for his eyes are now higher than the eyes of the giant. So are we dwarves riding on the necks of giants, for we have seen their wisdom and we surpass it. And it is by virtue of their wisdom that we have the wisdom to say all that we say, not that we are greater than they. I want to thank Michael Fessler, a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, for pointing me to the Stephen Jay Gould article. If you want to read an entertaining book that tells more than any one would ever want to know about this aphorism, while providing various insights into human nature and academia, see On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscipt by Robert K. Merton. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz
		last update: August 1999 Got a question for Reb on the Web? Visit our Archived Questions SHOOT*! ("SHOOT" is the Hebrew acronym for SHe'elot OOTeshuvot (Questions and Answers), the centuries-old dialogue between Jews and their rabbis.)

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