Does that make the "The weight of history" equivalent to "The weight of giants"? That is to say we owe much of our knowledge to those who came before even if that knowledge is wrong.

Not quite. The shoulders of giants metaphor is positive. We stand on what they have built and can see farther. The giant is a good thing.

The weight of history (I just made it up) is used more negatively, though much that ties us down is indeed valuable. But when trying to do something new you will be constrained by the structures history has left us. This is both good and bad.

Given the English connotation of giants from the existing quote, I'd avoid using it in the sense you meant.

It's an ideological framework (I guess you could call it that). If a giant's invention of X made Y and Z wildly popular, then we often assume that when designing A, if we want to replicate Y and Z's success, we should start with X.

That is, however, not the case. You need to work from the needs of A, and find solutions to those problems regardless of how the giants did things. The giants likely weren't wrong. It's just that your problem is different than theirs, and so their solutions, no matter how great they are, may not be appropriate.