Newton’s most famous remark about the process of scientific discovery: ‘I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great Ocean of truth lay all before me.’ It was a modest and yet thrilling image, which would be carried by thousands of Victorian schoolchildren – and their parents — to the holiday beaches and sea-bathing that were just becoming popular.
