Was the ethical requirement to discuss and acknowledge predecessors work as developed in Newton's time as in our own? I would naturally expect not because it would seem to me to be the kind of thing that develops over time, but I could be wrong as I am not a historian of science.
replyJohn Maynard Keynes is famously quoted as stating:
reply “[Newton] was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.”We seem to have come around to a new magical age.
replyIt's a not a requirement, it's just a natural to do as a research scientist and a student of knowledge to acknowledge prior contributions if you knew it. The same is true when you are at the time of Aristotle.
reply"Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!"
replyIt reminds me a bit of an anthropology question I've heard brought up a lot that's sort of the dark inverse of xkcd 1053 [0], that many things that "everybody knows" tend to get lost over enough time. You don't need to properly cite experiments or lectures or books that "everybody knows". Especially when the work you do essentially replaces those things in the canon, such connections sometimes get entirely lost. To an anthropologist working in some ancient language the variations of the phrase "as everybody knows" are often a missing or lost citation today. The places where it is so implied that you have the same education or background or textbook as the author to not even warrant an "as everybody knows" is an ever worse thing because you don't even have the marker that you are missing a citation.
replySee also this article, which discusses transcripts from lectures given by Einstein in Kyoto and Chicago in 1922 and 1921 (respectively), and letters from 1899, with earlier accounts of the Michelson-Morley experiment influence:
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