The Rise And Fall Of The Apple

Apples have been falling on the ground since before humans were mean to each other. Since before the first law of thermodynamics, and even before Archimedes jumped out of the bathtub. But never, I repeat, never was it a problem. Because nobody cared. Nobody noticed. Anonymity was just fine for the apples. And life was good. Falling with a healthy thump, and sticking in the marshy ground with pride, claiming their space and sitting on it fat and plump.

But along came Newton. And ruined it all.

This is a story of an Apple's fight against the Law of Gravitation, the story of one apple's fight against the whole of scientific community, those arrogant windbags who think they know apples.

This is the story of the Apple that hung from a tree branch, right above the crossroads of History, and said "I have a dream".

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of anywhere.


Thirty two point five score years ago, a stupid man, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, discovered the Law of Gravitation. This momentous decree came as a great blow to the self-respect of millions of proud Apples who had been living their lives with great satisfaction and freedom of choice since the Sixth Day of Creation.

Now countless years later, the Apple is still not free. Countless years later, the life of the Apple is still sadly determined by the manacles of the Earth's mass and the chains of the Gravitational Constant. Countless years later, the Apple lives on a lonely island of determinism in the midst of a vast ocean of unexplained phenomena. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.


In a sense we've come knocking at the educated world's conscience to prove a point. When the man in that garden under an Apple tree wrote those demeaning words of the Law of Gravitation, he was signing a humiliating profanity to which every dignified Apple was hence to be subjected. This law was a belittling generalisation that all apples, yes, small and large, educated and illiterate, would guaranteed fall to the ground same as every other. It took away the Apple's "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Free Will." It is obvious today that the scientific community has taken for granted this really-very-stupid law; and instead of honoring our volition to life, given the Apples a stringent rule, a law of motion through that sacred space between the revered tree branch and the holy ground.

But we refuse to believe that this horrifying generalisation is a law. We refuse to believe that there aren't Apples who don't fall, but jump, of their own accord, in their own free path. Who here hasn't heard of the great lunges of Dapple, the Apple. And who hasn't heard since birth the stories of the daring, the adventurous Red Hot Balls, whose stunts in mid-air were an astonishment to the most experienced of flying apples. And so, we've come to prove a point, a proof that will give us henceforth the riches of freedom and the respect of complexity.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind Appledom of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of predictability or to take the tranquilizing acceleration of 9.8 meter per second square. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate, anecdotal out-of-syllabus boxes in the corner of a page in a physics book chapter to the esteemed befuddling titles of research papers. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of us God's favorite fruits. Now is the time to prove that Eve was right, in choosing us.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in my Branch of Birth.

I have a dream that one day on the colored pages of Resnick & Halliday, the rotund curvaceous apples of a proud red color, and the quarks and mesons will be able to sit down together in the star-marked questions and the Appendices in the end.


I have a dream that one day even the Newton biographies, those books sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into a story of the greatest false positive ever.


I have a dream that my four red neighbours will henceforth live in a world where they will not be judged by the value of their mass but by the content of their character.


I have a dream today!


I have a dream that one day, down in CERN, with its vicious scientists, with its Chief and his lips wet with meaningless words like 'Higgs Boson' and 'Heisenberg's Uncertainty' -- one day right there in CERN, little red apples and enthusiastic interns will be able to join hands and churn out sponsored research papers about fast colliding apples.


I have a dream today!


I have a dream that one day every Apple shall be unique, and every fall and landing shall be eccentric, the Apple's individuality will be recognized, and the Apple that fell on Newton's head will be vindicated; 'and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all carbon shall see it together.'


This is our hope, and this is the faith that I fly down to the Ground with."

Thus another one walked the line, the acceleration, and fast bit the dust, exactly at t=under-root(2h/g).