Comment by schubidubiduba
9 hours ago
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.