Scott Berkun

Challenging Newton’s Apple

Recently The Royal Society put their copy of the best evidence in the world about the fabled story of Newton watching an apple fall up on the web. NPR picked up the story here.

In my besteller, the Myths of Innovation, I spend a chapter exploring the failings of the story, and others like it, and how misused these tales often are.

But I have doubts this event ever took place. The book The Royal Society posted was titled Memoirs of Isaac Newton, written by his friend William Stukeley.

Here are the facts:

• Stukeley interviewed Newton in 1726. Newton died in 1727. Stukeley published his “Memoirs of Newton’ in 1752 at earliest.  Meaning Newton never saw the book.
• The story comes from a ‘biographer’ (Stukeley), writing about Newton. Biographers, certainly in 1720, are not objective reporters running around checking facts. They are often fans of their subjects, as Stukeley was of Newton.
• At the time they talked they were sitting under apple trees.
• The entire account is written by Stukeley, not Newton, despite the title.
• The ‘event’ Newton supposedly told Stukeley, happened 60 years earlier.
• There are few other first person source anywhere, in Newton’s journals or other biographies, of ‘the event’. (Please comment if I’m wrong).

In James Glieck’s excellent biography, Isaac Newton, he strongly suggests Newton offered the story as an metaphoric anecdote, as way to express his curiosity about the world, rather than as a literal tale about specific singular moment that redefined his view of things.

(for Americans: the bit about getting hit on the head was added much later, as often happens with myths. And it appeared in Schoolhouse rock).

Now my point here is not to say epiphanies never happen. Most creative people have them now and then, and I do too (but I argue they are overrated and do not eliminate the hard work and risk that follows them. Newton worked for a decade to complete his theory on gravity that he became famous for). I’m also not questioning Newton’s genius – he was one.  But reasonable doubt about this legend is warranted given the extremely thin evidence we have.

Frankly I don’t trust Stukeley. He was apparently a good friend of Newton’s. Just as I wouldn’t trust a biographer/friend interviewing someone famous late in their life, who somehow manages to tell only them a story about something that happened decades ago, that the famous person never mentioned in any of their own extensive journals and writings or interviews with other people.  I can guess Stukeley wanted Newton to look good. He also wanted his book to be read (though the publishing history of the memoir is unclear). And in the spirit of those two things some exaggeration of facts and conversion of abstract anecdotes into real specific events would not be surprising.

In an article at The Independent, one of the few pieces this week to do research at all, offers this report from an expert at the Royal Society, which owns the manuscript:

“Newton cleverly honed this anecdote over time,” said Keith Moore, head of archives at the Royal Society. “The story was certainly true, but let’s say it got better with the telling.” The story of the apple fitted with the idea of an Earth-shaped object being attracted to the Earth. It also had a resonance with the Biblical account of the tree of knowledge, and Newton was known to have extreme religious views, Mr Moore said.

Newton had a huge ego and was kind of a jerk. This is undisputed. A living legend telling exaggerated tales about things that happened decades ago seems possible.

I’m surprised that in the history of science so few people have raised any questions at all.

I’d love to see the web help me round out the facts, find experts and other familiar with the sources.  Spread the word.

• Posted Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 1:12 pm


• in Innovation | 8 Comments » |