Author: Robert K. Merton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keywords: postscript, shandean, giants, shoulders
Number of Pages: 348
Published: 1993-05-15
List price: $30.00
ISBN-10: 0226520862
ISBN-13: 9780226520865

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 brandis