Bernard of Chartres

Bernard of Chartres (Latin: Bernardus Carnotensis; died after 1124) was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, scholar, and administrator. Gilbert de la Porrée and William of Conches were students of his, and their writings reference his work, as do the writings of John of Salisbury.

Quotes

  • Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantum humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.
    • Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.
    • In John of Salisbury, Metalogicon (1159) bk. 3, ch. 4. Tr. Scott D. Troyan, Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (2004), p. 10
      Compare: Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676), "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants."
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