King Herio II had commissioned a new royal crown, for which he provided the gold. Let’s consider another famous eureka moment-the Greek mathematician Archimedes and the story of how he solved a problem for the king of Syracuse by taking a bath. But I do not think the apple went plonk on his head. I think you could look at it as a core of truth. Keith Moore, the Royal Society’s librarian, wryly describes the apple story as “an 18th-century sound bite.” Is it fair to accuse Newton of being a spin-doctor, or worse, lying? I don’t think Newton is lying. People remember it, tell it, and it gets better with the retelling. So, what could be better than coming up with the idea he was a wunderkind? It’s a nice visual story about inspiration. ![]() Leibniz published first, but Newton thought of it earlier. Another reason there was an agenda to promote the story was that Newton had been involved in a dispute with the philosopher-mathematician Leibniz over the discovery of calculus. What gives the tale such long legs? First of all, Stukeley's Memoirs of Newton is one of the few sources we have about his early life. I can imagine Stukeley, who was intelligent but also very naïve, saying to Newton: Oh, really? So then the story was embellished-the apple didn’t just fall it fell on Newton’s head. They are having tea under apple trees in Newton's garden in Kensington, so they get to talking, and Newton says, Well, you know I first saw the idea of gravity sitting under the apple tree when I was a young man in Woolsthorpe. By then, he was “The Great Man,” the statesman of science gathering his acolytes around him. Newton is telling the story as an old man to a young disciple. It was 1726, in London, and Newton was no longer the young genius trying to get on. It was written by William Stukeley, his friend and first biographer, who quotes Newton as saying his thinking on the nature of gravity “was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood.” Doesn’t that validate the story? Stukeley wasn’t told the story by Newton in Lincolnshire, England, where the tree is. The story of Newton and the falling apple is recorded in an 18th-century manuscript in the Royal Society in London. The following conversation with Roos took place at Newton’s birthplace, Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, England, near the apple tree said to have inspired his theory of gravitation, and in London, England. While Anna Marie Roos, a historian of science at the University of Lincoln, in Lincoln, England, advises us to take some “eureka moments” with a grain of salt, she thinks they do have much to say about the creative process. Or, as Archimedes reputedly said when insight struck, Eureka! Today, the flash of insight is measurable using brain scans, which show a part of the right hemisphere lights up at that moment. ![]() These are iconic “light bulb” moments in the history of science. Greek polymath Archimedes takes a bath and figures out how to calculate volume and density. If you can point us in the right direction.A falling apple prompts physicist Isaac Newton to formulate his laws of gravity. Something wrong with this post? Thanks for letting us know. Now I am sharing them with the young families I get to know along the way. Listening to Jim’s stories remains among our fondest shared memories. I liken listening to Jim’s stories to taking a vitamin for learning and excitement and curiosity for life that you could not get in many more places these days. Their teachers were always astounded by the breadth of information they had been exposed to and the foundation that was laid by Jim’s stories made their minds fertile and ready to learn everything else they wanted to learn. Jim’s stories brought our minds alive and sparked the imagination my kids absorbed the information like a sponge and went on dreaming and thinking long after the recording had ended. My children are both grown up now, and are successful in life. The storytelling form is more powerful and different than any other learning device I’ve yet to discover. I think we had over 30 cd’s before they left for college. Both of my children (and I) listened to many of Jim’s stories over the years.
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