READY, FIRE, AIM: Sir Isaac Newton Ruined My Life

Most people don’t know — and would probably never suspect — that I am related to Sir Isaac Newton.

Not ‘closely’ related, however.

Sir Isaac and I are both descended from Homo Sapiens Idaltu, who lived in western Africa a while back (160,000 years ago, give or take.) I think that was her married name, but I’ve usually referred to her simply as “Ida”.

Somehow, Sir Isaac ended up in England, and I ended up over here on the other side of the pond. But his curse followed me, nevertheless.

Many people may have suffered like I did, trying to learn Calculus, which Sir Isaac invented, needlessly. (The term “needlessly” applies equally to my siffering and to the invention.) Addition and subtraction are completely sufficient, in my opinion, for every possible human need — in particular, for balancing my checkbook — but Sir Isaac wasn’t satisfied, and had to make life more difficult by developing a series of stupid mathematical puzzles that ruined my senior year in high school.

But that’s not the curse to which I refer.

I’m thinking specifically of the Law of Gravity.

Sir Isaac lived on a farm as a young man, and hated every minute of it. But legend has it that he was sitting under an apple tree (slacking on his farm duties?) and got hit on the head by a falling apple. Apparently, the apple was large and heavy, and fell from a considerable height, because it seems to have caused Sir Isaac to rush home and write a book called Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Inexplicably, he wrote the book entirely in Latin, which I think provides ample evidence that he had suffered a brain injury from the falling apple.

In the book — which, admittedly, I haven’t read — Sir Isaac proposed the Law of Gravity, stating, essentially, that whatever goes up, must come down.

This happened in 1687. Prior to 1687, there was no Law governing the operation of Gravity. Gravity could do whatever it wanted to do, and no one really cared. If things wanted to go up, and never come down, that was just fine.

But when someone makes a Law, everyone suddenly thinks they have to abide by the Law. (Unless they are criminals, or politicians.) So, ever since 1687, things that went up thought they had to go down. It was the Law.

Here’s a oil portrait of my (distant) relative, posing in his bathrobe at age 46.

“Isaacvs Newtonvs” as rendered by Godfrey Kneller.

We note, in the bottom left corner of this portrait, that Sir Isaac was, at the time, using the alias “Isaacvs Newtonvs” which I am at a loss to pronounce correctly.

Does this man look arrogant to you? Like the kind of man who would create a Law telling Gravity what to do?

And then go around using an alias to try and protect his identity? That’s how it looks to me.

Although Sir Isaac and I are related, I just want to be very clear that I’ve never created a Law telling things how to behave, or whether they’re are allowed to go up, or down.

My point being, if Sir Isaac had stuck to farming — like his mom wanted him to — instead of sitting under apple trees and writing books in Latin, I wouldn’t need to buy an airplane ticket every time I wanted to fly somewhere.

If that’s not a curse, tell me what is.

Louis Cannon

Louis Cannon

Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.