"I wish it was the entire tree that fell on Newton's head instead of just one apple."
A sentence that's supposed to incite laughter in its audience. One may call it a joke.
Because it's so easy, right? To take pride in not understanding science or math. To wish that Newton and others like him died a horrible death before contributing what they contributed so you could be spared from doing some schoolwork.
Oh, and so you wouldn't have to complain about it on inventions that were made possible because of their discoveries. Yeah, heaven forbid that should ever happen.
You know what? It's no use making the argument that science is beautiful, that science is complex, and that the complexity of science is what makes life worth living. So I invite you to consider the society at the time these geniuses put forward their groundbreaking ideas.
"Before the battle of the fist, comes the battle of the mind."
Galileo Galilei, who dared to go against the Church and become a proponent of the heliocentric theory, was put under house arrest.
Giordano Bruno was burned alive for the same reason.
Copernicus was warned against publishing his heliocentric theory on the grounds that it might spur controversy (remember that the Catholic Church was considered authority in his, Galileo's, and Bruno's time).
The presence of germs was known for nearly two centuries before the germ theory of disease was proposed. People didn't know to wash their hands before the seventeenth century.
Socrates was forced to consume poison because he was found guilty of not believing in the ancient Greek gods and of introducing new ideas to the youth of Athens.
Hypatia of Alexandria was a scholar at a time when women of her intellect were feared. "A woman of science? Sound the alarm!"
People of the past were brutal. Contempt for STEM fields today is quite subtle, but still visible. Anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, creationists, and flat-Earthers are but a few of the manifestations of the outright denial of science.
But there is something that the past and present have in common. Scientists are always fighting a battle of the mind when the people around them are in outright denial of the same math that says that 2+2=4, and the same science that says that humans need water to live.
And believe me when I say, it is not easy fighting a battle of the mind.
So I am led to wonder: Is sentencing a scientist to a horrible fate, a brutal manifestation of taking pride in cussing out the people (the scientists) because of whom we live in a digital age today?
