Newton's Apple Story Goes Online 114
Hugh Pickens writes "Although many historians are skeptical of the story, Rev. William Stukeley, a physician, cleric, and prominent antiquarian, wrote that he was once enjoying afternoon tea with Sir Isaac Newton amid the Woolsthorpe apple trees when the mathematician reminisced that he was just in the same situation as when the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. The original version of the story of Sir Isaac Newton and the falling apple first appeared in Stukeley's 1752 biography, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life. Now BBC reports that UK's Royal Society has converted the fragile manuscript into an electronic book, which anybody with internet access will now be able to read and decide for themselves. 'The story of Newton and the apple, which had gradually become debunked over the years. It is now clear, it is based on a conversation between Newton and Stukeley,' says Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University's Trinity College. 'We needn't believe that the apple hit his head, but sitting in the orchard and seeing the apple fall triggered that work. It was a chance event that got him engaged with something he might have otherwise have shelved.'"
Apple Newton (Score:5, Funny)
It took me a couple minutes to realize the story was not about the Apple Newton, leading into the rumored Apple Tablet...
I didn't realize technology had such a hold on my perception of current and past events, as well as common sense.
Re:Apple Newton (Score:5, Funny)
You clearly didn't recognize the gravity of your situation.
Woosh! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Did you just woosh yourself? Because you’re the only one I see that did not get it. ^^
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
I fell for that one too...
Re: (Score:2)
"On the contrary, gravity is the foremost thing on my mind" -- Kirk
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, I would expect them to get a DMCA takedown letter from Apple's lawyers any minute now.
Re: (Score:1)
Names of companies and branded products are usually capitalized anyway, title or not.
As, for future reference, are names of countries and words derived therefrom.
Re: (Score:2)
Names of companies and branded products are usually capitalized anyway, title or not.
Yeah, but consider that Apple sells computers whose file systems are case-insensitive. So even if you distinguish "apple falling" from "Apple falling", Apple's lawyers probably won't.
(This fact has sufficed to exclude Apple servers for several projects that I've worked on. We decided it was OK to develop stuff on OS X, but porting stuff to OS X from any other system can be full of gotchas because of file-name confusion.
Re: (Score:2)
The english way of capitalizing words in titles doesn't help either.
The English way of punctuating would have helped though:
'Newton's Apple' Story Goes Online
(and no, nobody cares that the quotes don't balance)
Fortunately (Score:4, Funny)
Newton's apple was better received than Apple's Newton.
What are you talking about? (Score:2)
It wasn't received well at all. It fell flat on the ground!
Re: (Score:2)
Which one?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It took me a couple minutes to realize the story was not about the Apple Newton, leading into the rumored Apple Tablet...
I didn't realize technology had such a hold on my perception of current and past events, as well as common sense.
Me too. And add another one... I also couldn't tell if it meant the background development of the TV show "Newton's Apple" [wikipedia.org]
Gravity (Score:2)
Gravity is just the scientific way of saying the planet sucks. Newton was trying to avoid the plague at the time, which is why he was in his country home, if I'm not mistaken. /The first sentence was sarcasm //The second is just a random fact ///No, I did not look it up.
Re: (Score:1)
Nope, gravity is the scientific way of saying that everything sucks. cf. vacuum, the scientific way of saying that even when you don't have anything at all, it still sucks.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair though, I'd think a story about the Apple Newton would be more likely than a story that happened hundreds of years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
He's a pretty intelligent, smart person.
That's racist!
It doesn't matter what the truth is (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of times, the truth isn't relevant. We have made many heroes in society, and we didn't do it for them: We did it for ourselves. A lot of people we call heroes don't deserve it. Many of them didn't do anything at all. For example, United Airlines Flight 93: We have o objective proof of any kind that the passengers staged any kind of revolt, save a vague phone call. But we deified them into heroes after the tragedy as a symbol of hope. It doesn't matter whether the story is true or not. We needed something to symbolize strength and found it there.
It doesn't matter if the Apple hit Newton on the head or not. What matters is that it is a colorful story that explains the spirit of scientific discovery. It's the same with Einstein -- how many different ways has popular culture misattributed his discovery of the theory of relativity, or attributed a quote to Einstein that was really by somebody else (or made up). The story of Einstein endures as much because of his scientific achievement as because of popular culture stories that give people hope. Specifically, the hope that if they are smart and study hard, they can achieve great things. Today's sociological research rejects the contention that intelligence has any real bearing on success -- success is a combination of factors, of which intelligence can sometimes help a person.
We use stories and heroes in scientific literature the same as in any other: To convey our values. As far as I'm concerned, the Apple hit Newton on the head--even if it didn't.
Re:It doesn't matter what the truth is (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It doesn't matter what the truth is (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I think you meant managers with the drug reference. the scientists, while not exactly free from blame, are just doing their jobs
Re: (Score:2)
Well Einstein’s relativity already fucked it up pretty good. In a relative universe, there is little absolute truth. ;)
But only in duet with Heisenberg was it finally a FUBAR of epic proportions. Now truth is only whatever you look at. And since everyone is standing at a different relative point in spacetime, everyone sees everything differently.
Without us constantly ignoring that all we know is interpreted by our brain, after being processed by our senses, after mostly coming out of a second or even
Re: (Score:2)
P.S.: No, I was not completely serious! ^^
Re: (Score:2)
This might not be a popular observation in some circles, but there is a certain brand of religious sentiment rooted in separation disorder and potential collapse of the boundaries of self. In this tent, god functions as an auxiliary shoring pole. Somehow, despite insuperable odds against this, some of us manage to function without one.
Ha
Re:It doesn't matter what the truth is (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually we do have evidence that the passengers of flight 93 tried to break into the cockpit, namely the flight recorders record the hijackers discussing the revolt.
We don't know who may have been trying to break into the cockpit, only that there were signs of a struggle on the other side of the door. For all we know, the passengers could have been fighting amongst themselves. There's no way for anyone to know what really happened on the other side of that door. But every one of them, whether they did something or not, was declared a hero and there are plaques all over the country listing their names.
This was my only point: It doesn't matter what they did, what matters
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Another hijacker responded, "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."
The hijackers were in fact aware that the passengers were revolting and trying to get into the cockpit. Read the damned article if you don't believe me.
So yeah, you don't really have a point.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, you oh so conveniently switched your argument from the passengers as a group(an
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
You have that story all wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
You've got the story all wrong. While it's true that the hijackers, not the passengers, downed that flight, there's plenty of evidence (from the flight recorder and elsewhere) that they did it because the passengers were trying to retake the plane.
And it's a good thing that people have their example, because passengers resisting the terrorists for fear of their lives is what has stopped every attempted terrorist after them. Sure, their bombs probably wouldn't work, but lucky for us, the passengers made su
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Only two changes post 9/11 have significantly increased airplane security. One is that passengers are now aware that they should resist hijackers (or other possible terrorists, like somebody licking their shoelaces on fire), and the reinforced cockpit doors. We change pretty much every else back to pre-9/11 standards and we save a ton of money, and reduce aggravation by a very significant amount, with virtually no decrease in actual security.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly! Apart from basic baggage scanning to make sure there are no bombs, we really just need to m
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
girlintraining [slashdot.org], you are my hero. Actually, you're not, but that's irrelevant, the point is that I could have predicted 99% of the posts in this thread, but your post was refreshingly different, it gives me hope that living in denial is not such a bad thing as long as believing in fairy tales has some positive effect on society.
Re: (Score:2)
What?
Science doesn't require any beliefs, and anything that's found to be incorrect is abandoned (you know what I mean).
Plenty of science has nothing to do with any fundamental questions. That's people, not science.
Re: (Score:1)
Science doesn't require any beliefs, and anything that's found to be incorrect is abandoned (you know what I mean).
Belief, def: "confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof."
Axiom, def.: a universally accepted principle or rule.
Interesting, isn't it, how close those two definitions are to each other. Science does, in fact, depend on believing things that can't be proved.
Re: (Score:1)
Axioms are part of maths, not science.
Interesting, isn't it, how close those two definitions are to each other.
By "close", you mean different. Axioms are chosen because they have useful properties in forming a set of mathematics that we are interested in.
No one is required to believe an axiom to be true - in fact, this is clearly not the case, as we can take different axioms, and build different mathematical systems from them. It's no more a "belief" than me choosing what colour t-shirt I'm going to wear to
Re: (Score:1)
While science does try to minimize axioms, it requires a belief in an objective material universe about which observations can be accurately made and reported, even second- or third-hand. Some philosophers would question the existence of objective reality. And the unreliability of eyewitness observations, much less hearsay, is known to many lawyers.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It is a method of inquiry, it has certain things that are beyond question (axiomic), and it seeks to answer fundamental questions about the universe.
So not at all like religion, which doesn't inquire, and doesnt answer those questions.
It also believes in fairy tales like zombie cats in boxes, as a way of conveying values and knowledge of the world.
There is no belief. Presumably you're referring to the thought experiment in quantum mechanics which is just that, a thought experiement. No one claims this cat
Re: (Score:1)
The histories of some religions are full of inquiry -- Thomas Aquinas in Catholicism comes to mind. And most religions answer fundamental questions. Now, they may have been doing the inquiry in a way that's not back by empirical reasoning ("I was wondering about XYZ, so I looked it up in the Bible, and I prayed really hard") and so get answers that are wrong ("God did it"), but religion most definitely can feature inquiry
Re: (Score:1)
The histories of some religions are full of inquiry -- Thomas Aquinas in Catholicism comes to mind. And most religions answer fundamental questions.
Well indeed they inquire, but do they give us the answer, is more what I mean. (By answer, I mean the correct one, not made up ones.)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
No, I'm referring to the whole of mathematics, one of the cornerstones of science.
Maths isn't science, but even so, it still doesn't require beliefs. And whilst we're at it, science and maths aren't people - they don't and can't have beliefs.
So come on, what are these "fairy tales like zombie cats in boxes" you allege are asserted by maths or science, or whatever it is you are saying?
Science also has a few tenets of faith, like occam's razor.
That's not a requirement of science, nor a belief - it's a princip
Re: (Score:1)
Maths isn't science, but even so, it still doesn't require beliefs.
Okay, well, when you stop believing that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, let me know how that works out for you. Axioms are beliefs: They're taken as true and do not require proofs.
Re: (Score:2)
There are several ways to prove that the angles in a triangle sum to 180 [cut-the-knot.org].
Axioms in mathematics vary, but here [wikipedia.org] are the most common. It's a while since I studied this, but the first one means (I think), "starting from zero, and counting upwards, we will never again get zero". The second one means something roughly like "for all x and all y, if the successor of x (i.e. x+1) is equal to the successor of y (i.e. y+1) then x is equal to y".
Axioms don't require proofs, but they do require a strict (and preferably
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Okay, well, when you stop believing that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees
I don't believe that. In the 19th Century, mathematicians constructed non-Euclidean geometries [wikipedia.org], and those work out just fine.
I only believe that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees given those certain initial axioms of Euclidean geometry. But nowhere do I believe those axioms are true. In terms of mathematics, there is no need for us to believe any one set of axioms to be true. In terms of the physical universe
Re: (Score:1)
Not really. Axioms are assumptions. You can move back and forth freely between sets of assumptions, something you can't do with beliefs. Yes, people do change their beliefs, but it's generally a slow and difficult process, whereas a mathematician might move between the axioms of Euclidean and hyperbolic geometry several times in an hour.
Re: (Score:1)
That's not a requirement of science, nor a belief - it's a principle that makes science either
Gah, I meant "it's a principle that makes science easier".
Berthold Brecht said, in Galileo (Score:2)
(Unlucky is the land that has no heroes....unlucky is the land that needs heroes". Sadly, the fact that the US has such a need of heroes points to something wrong in the US psyche. I have sometimes felt that the US need for heroes derives, in fact, from a fear caused by the lack of social security and medical security in the US. Social democracies like Sweden do
Re: (Score:1)
I would also add that sociological research says no such thing, and I challenge you to produce a list of reputable papers that suggest that IQ is not correlated with income or social class, other than popsci books.
How about the American Psychological Association...
"The validity of IQ as a predictor of job performance is above zero for all work studied to date, but varies with the type of job and across different studies, ranging from 0.2 to 0.6." Source [wikipedia.org] ... "The American Psychological Association's report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns states that other individual characteristics such as interpersonal skills, aspects of personality etc. are probably of equal or greater importance."
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of times, the truth isn't relevant.
Yes, like when you don't care about something. This is a story that talks about whether something actually happened. The truth matters in such a case.
It doesn't matter if the Apple hit Newton on the head or not. What matters is that it is a colorful story that explains the spirit of scientific discovery.
There are lots of wonderful, "colorful" stories in history. We don't need to make them up to have examples of "the spirit of scientific discovery."
It's the same with Einstein -- how many different ways has popular culture misattributed his discovery of the theory of relativity, or attributed a quote to Einstein that was really by somebody else (or made up).
Lots. But if I want to know what Einstein actually thought about something, I want to know whether he actually said it. That's a matter of history.
The story of Einstein endures as much because of his scientific achievement as because of popular culture stories that give people hope. Specifically, the hope that if they are smart and study hard, they can achieve great things.
Yeah... um, Einstein's story would be inspirational even if we
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I can understand "It doesn't really matter if an apple hit him on the head or not, so let's stop trying to decide if it really happened".
But I'm not so sure about "It doesn't really matter if an apple hit him on the head or not, so let's claim it to be true". The argument about stories sounds worryingly close to the "They're just stories, honest" arguments made when religious people make claims about things being true, when we have no evidence for them.
Specifically, the hope that if they are smart and study
Finally someone who can address the myth! (Score:3, Funny)
I've suspected you were Melinda Gates for some time now, but this is the first time I have been unable to uncover any direct evidience. Is it true that a computer fell on Bill's head and inspired him to discover the GUI and pay someone to write Windows?
Re: (Score:1)
Is it true that a computer fell on Bill's head and inspired him to discover the GUI and pay someone to write Windows?
That makes more sense than all the other theories about how he came up with the idea.
Re: (Score:2)
"We have o objective proof of any kind that the passengers staged any kind of revolt, save a vague phone call. "
This statement has been comprehensively debunked in the thread below, and you would be wise to retract it.
Re: (Score:1)
not news (Score:3, Interesting)
for example, search for this text:
"amidst other discourse he told me he was just in the same situation"
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, e.g., this page [sussex.ac.uk] seems to have the whole text of the book. However, (a) it is kind of cool to see it so directly, as written by one of Newton's contemporaries, and (b) very few people probably know about it. I'm a physics teacher, and I've been telling people for years that the story was probably true because Newton's niece remembered him telling it to her. I'd never heard that Stukeley als
Re: (Score:2)
Saying "will now be able to read" implies that we were not able to read it before. That's just not true. Yes, we can see the imag
My eyes! (Score:2)
All those s/f things make my eyes bleed. I'm glad that dropped out of modern handwriting, but the new s isn't much better.
Die, handwriting cursive script. Block letters or fancy computer fonts for everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
You are a soulless, brainless quasi-robotic drone, lacking any cultural sensitivity or artistic taste, and blessed with the attention span of a battered goldfish, and the wedding tackle of a hamster.
Oh, and I disagree about the handwriting.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Blogs are roaming the earth yet best seller lists continue on. Go figure.
Re:Blogs (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because nobody [amazon.com] writes [amazon.com] about [amazon.com] stuff [w3.org] like [randomhouse.com] that [nap.edu] any [amazon.com] more. [amazon.com]
Hey man, just cause you're not reading them, doesn't mean they aren't being written. You also seem to think that writing is a zero-sum game: that the more is blogged, the less is published in a more permanent fashion. It just ain't so: today's blog is often just a more sharable and immediate addition to lab notes. The phrase is still "publish or perish", not "post or perish".
Imagine (Score:1)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of falling apples....
Oh, this isnt about the Mac, is it?
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine it would look something like this [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
There's a Trinity College at both Cambridge and at Oxford: Trinity College, Oxford.
That makes it handy for OxBridge students.
Cue apple fanbois in 3 2 1 (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
red delicious my ass.
Re: (Score:2)
Flower of Kent [wikipedia.org], maybe...
back to Eden (Score:1, Interesting)
regardless of the story's veracity as fact, it is symbolically sound:
The fruit from the tree of knowledge, under the power of gravity, fell and struck Newton in the centre of his intellect.
I for one, will buy it (Score:5, Funny)
Man the rumors on this new force thing are really ramping up leading up to Apple's expected event at the end of the month. I've heard some people claim that it is a whole new force while others are just complaining "aww... it's just another form of the same old electromagnetism we've seen."
Whatever it is, Apple doesn't disappoint very often. I've heard speculation that they'll be calling it "iGravity" or something similar. Now this headline is saying that it will go online somehow. I can't wait!
Re: (Score:1)
They invented calculus, dont you know.
Well actually they were beaten to it by some German company a few hundred years earlier. But Apple's version "works better", it just does, honest!
This is why ... (Score:4, Funny)
... gravity wsn't discovered by a Hawaiian scientist. It would have been a coconut and he would have been killed when it hit his head. No theory of gravity.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would have been a coconut and he would have been killed when it hit his head. No theory of gravity.
Although it is true that falling coconuts kill more people every year than sharks, it is not clear why you think Newton was hit on the head by an apple.
The text makes it obvious he was seeing an apple fall (probably more than one if he really sat in an orchard for any length of time. It's fairly rare that we have an opportunity to observe a freely falling object from a distance, and orchards are excellent
Re: (Score:2)
Although it is true that falling coconuts kill more people every year than sharks,
And we haven't even addressed those diabolical coconuts with lasers....
"Multi-breasted female figure" (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a more important mystery here than whether Newton actually saw an apple fall. Please see this illustration in Stukeley's memoir [onlineculture.co.uk].
The caption explains what I am seeing: "Newton’s face is shown in profile, in the style of a medallion and supported by a multi-breasted female figure."
The caption does not explain why I am seeing it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursa_Major#Mythology [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis#Artemis_as_the_Lady_of_Ephesus [wikipedia.org]
Short version -- Artemis as the Lady of Ephesus was depicted with "accessory breasts", and is related to the constellation Ursa via legend. AFAICT it's just decoration.
FWIW,
-theGreater.