STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton
Human knowledge is cumulative, yet it rarely feels inherited. Each generation experiences its beliefs as obvious or self generated, forgetting that ideas are products of the intellectual environment into which people are born. What any individual considers rational, moral, or self evident is largely determined by the knowledge already accumulated before they arrive.
Collective learning is the uniquely human ability to store, transmit, and build upon information across generations. Language, writing, education, and now digital technology allow ideas to outlive individuals. No one begins thinking from scratch. Every concept, from mathematics to morality, rests on layers of prior discovery. Newton’s remark was not modesty but accuracy: progress occurs because thought is cumulative rather than individual.
This also means belief changes with time. Three thousand years ago, you would have believed that natural forces possessed agency and intention, because animism provided the most coherent explanation available. Two hundred years ago, you would have believed that illness spread through miasma or “bad air,” because germ theory had not yet reshaped medicine. Ideas that now appear irrational once represented the best interpretations supported by existing knowledge.
The same mechanism operates today. People often assume their views result from independent reasoning, particularly when they see themselves as rational or enlightened. In reality, thought is constrained by the zeitgeist, the background framework of assumptions, technologies, and shared knowledge that defines what seems plausible at a given moment. Collective learning does not simply add facts; it reshapes what humans are capable of imagining.
Science therefore is not a sequence of sudden genius breakthroughs but an accumulation of corrections. Each generation inherits explanations, tests them against new evidence, and modifies them. Knowledge advances not because individuals think freely from nothing, but because humanity remembers. #collectivelearning #isaacnewton #standingontheshouldersofgiants #zeitgeist
