"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." This aphorism is commonly attributed to Isaac Newton, but it is actually much older and can still be interpreted today as a symbol of scientific work. The famous American sociologist Robert K. Merton traces the history of this aphorism and provides a brilliant piece of joyful science, a treatise that is both witty and scholarly about the self-understanding of scientists and the history of knowledge with all its curiosities, absurdities, and eccentricities.