Comment by bryanrasmussen
10 hours ago
while I said I was not a scientific historian I am well enough read that I can say no, the tradition of citing all sources is a relatively modern invention. Definitely not widespread in Aristotle's time, and not extensively practiced by Aristotle himself who very seldom names any source and their work, but I was not sure if in Newton's time it was already beginning to be established as I have not actually read many scientific papers from that time (some philosophical, but not science)
Furthermore I can't help but feel some logic would lead us to conclude it is not natural to cite, why? Because in our time if you do not cite your sources in a lot of occupations dealing with knowledge you will be punished for it. It would be absurd to construct punishments for failing to do what people will naturally do, and to have those punishments so often called on.
Even if we give a very lenient interpretation of not citing sources we would probably have around 10% of papers with errors, and that is with the fear of punishment.
Citing when one should and accurately is not normal, it requires discipline to do it, or there would not be such a high failure rate at doing it.
You need to differentiate between citing everything, and citing a select few prior works which are integral to your own. For the latter, it is very natural to mention and cite them, unless you have motive not to do so.
that, however, was not what was said - people were arguing about people not citing, and Newton not citing, and I asked if it was expected to cite them at that time. At which point another person argued that yes it was and that even back in Aristotle's time it was natural to cite, which the use of Aristotle, the guy whose predecessors seemed to almost all be either "some guy", "people say", or "those pesky Pythagoreans", as an example of someone who was naturally prone to cite put me a bit on edge.
So it seems you have established that no, Newton was not expected to cite everyone in his time, very well, this now puts the question further up the chain over my entry into the conversation - "Were the people Newton neglected to cite actually integral to his work?"
My definition of integral would be, two possible definitions:
1. do I write something here that someone reading it would say, "What?! What do you mean, explain yourself, how did you arrive at this surprising bit of information?!!" then it is integral.
2. Am I doing this based on some work that someone did without which I would definitely not be doing this? If I am doing it with knowledge of the prior work but whether or not the prior work existed I would still be doing it, the prior work is not actually integral.