NEWTON'S APPLE

Evening Star, Issue 22454, 26 September 1936, Page 2

NEWTON'S APPLE

Among the gifts which the Lord Mayor of London took with him when, he sailed for Canada [to attend the Vancouver jubilee] was a sprig of ivy, “ from the apple orchard at Woolsthorpe, where Sir Isaac Newton made the observation of the falling apple.’’ But did Newton make that “ observation”? There is some doubt as to whether the famous apple is not to be classed with William Tell’s, and that other of the_ Garden of Eden for which no warrant is to be found in the Bible. Pemberton, whose authority was Newton himself, merely says that the idea occurred to him “ as* he sat alone in a garden.” Voltaire, who had the story from Newton’s niece, writes that “ as he (Newton) was one day walking in his garden and saw some fruit fall from a tree, he fell into a profound meditation. . . .” It was Martin Folkes who first mentioned the “ apple ”; and as he was a friend of Newton’s and a vice-president of the Royal Society, his word, must carry weight. But the apple, as a factor in the world’s history, seems to have more than its share of ambiguity. About, the fact of the apple tree itself there is no doubt. It was blown down during a storm in 1807, and sawn in pieces by a 'schoolmaster, who, with some of his boys, presently appeared on the scene.A fragment," the property of the Royal Astronomical Society, is now at Burlington House.— ‘ Observer.’