What If The Apple Never Fell On Newtons Head?

By Shreya Sreekumar

This is a question that I asked myself multiple times in 9th grade, and I'm sure the rest of you (looking at you, pcm/pcb and other science maniac students) have also asked yourself. What if a coconut fell instead ? What if it was a guillotine ? Now through this essay I provide a peak at a universe where your dream has actually taken place , let's take a look.

Imagine a crisp English afternoon. Birds chirp. The air is thick with philosophical potential. And Sir Isaac Newton sits under a tree, presumably deep in thought or just avoiding chores. But wait—there’s a twist. The apple, history’s most overachieving fruit, doesn’t fall. It stays smugly attached to its twig, swaying gently in the breeze, unaware that it has just sabotaged the future of physics.Newton, spared the trauma of mild fruit-based cranial impact, simply stands up, brushes off his trousers, and spends the rest of the day wondering whether he left the stove on.

Yes, dear reader, this is a world where the apple never fell on Newton’s head. And consequently, gravity, as we know it, is never discovered—at least not by a wig-wearing gentleman in a garden.

Without the concussion of inspiration, Newton never formulates his law of universal gravitation. Instead, he publishes a largely ignored collection of pastoral poems titled Leaves of Light and Miscellaneous Sighs. Critics describe it as “bafflingly abstract” and “mostly about hedges.” Lacking scientific distraction, he spends his life pondering over whether God prefers roses or daffodils. Newton never conceives of gravity—not as a force, not as a law, not even as a mild suggestion. The concept of things falling is thus relegated to folklore. Gravity, lacking a respectable PR agent, continues to be misunderstood as a kind of divine mood swing.

Historians in this universe refer to him not as “the father of modern physics,” but as “that moody orchard guy.”

Without gravity hogging the spotlight, physics becomes the neglected middle child of science. Chemists roam wild, creating flamboyant elements and setting things on fire. Biologists name every lichen they find twice. Meanwhile, physicists sit around speculating whether things fall down out of boredom or shame.In universities, physics departments become part of the humanities. Students write essays on the emotional motivations of falling objects. Professors assign thought experiments like, “If a rock falls in a forest but no one understands Newton’s Second Law, does it still have inertia?” TED Talks are delivered on the topic of “Harnessing Inner Gravity to Elevate Your Soul.” No one knows what this means, but standing ovations are frequent.

Young minds never experience the joy ( is it actually ?) of calculating projectile motion or misapplying Newton’s laws to justify their skateboard tricks. The world continues to spin—though no one can quite explain why.

In a world without gravity theory, conspiracy theories flourish. Flat Earthers ascend to positions of genuine academic respectability. One widely accepted belief is that objects fall because they are trying to escape the embarrassment of being seen in public. Apples are deemed “narcissistic” for refusing to fall and are banned in several countries for being “antigravitational propaganda.”

Eventually, a bold scientist in Poland tosses a cabbage off a cliff and screams “Eureka!” This cabbage is later enshrined in a museum, worshipped by generations of future physicists as "The First Honest Vegetable."

Space exploration, in this world, never takes off—literally.Without gravity equations, rocket science remains, well, rocket fantasy. Rockets are designed like giant slingshots or involve massive fans aimed at the moon. The U.S. government funds a program to "lasso the sky," and the Soviet Union responds by strapping wings to bears and launching them from towers. Neither side succeeds, but both claim victory.The moon is considered unreachable—unless perhaps by ladder. NASA is replaced by NAHSA (Not Actually Heading Spaceward Agency), which specializes in balloon experiments and motivational speeches.

The Soviet Union sends a goat into the upper atmosphere via hot air balloon. The goat becomes a national hero, despite landing in Hungary and refusing to return.

In this grim gravitational vacuum, philosophers run unchecked through the fields of science. Without the constraints of force and mass, they declare matter to be a “bourgeois illusion,” and launch long debates about whether falling constitutes an act of free will. "What even is falling?" becomes a central tenet of modern thought.. Debates about whether the apple fell because it wanted to—or whether it was simply participating in an existential dance with the Earth—dominate academic journals.Heideggerian physicists write books titled Being and Falling and insist that gravity is a metaphor for emotional descent. Nietzsche is quoted at trampoline parks. Sartre develops a theory that bananas do not fall, they simply “choose not to ascend.”

Physics departments are overtaken by performance artists. One notorious demonstration includes a professor dramatically dropping eggs onto students while reciting Nietzsche.

Meanwhile, engineers and architects are left bewildered. Bridges buckle under the strain of philosophical ambiguity. Airplanes become interpretive art installations. Buildings are constructed sideways, in case gravity turns out to be a fad. It is not uncommon for elevator buttons to include a “maybe” floor, just in case the laws of physics decide to freelance.

Centuries later, in a moment of sheer boredom, a young student named Maxine watches an apple fall in a garden. She blinks. She asks, “Why did that happen?” Her friends shrug. “Wind?” one offers. “Depression?” says another.But Maxine investigates. She conducts experiments. She writes equations. She names her theory “Downness.” It is universally celebrated, until the French insist on renaming it Descente Magnifique and claim they invented it first.Newton is retroactively awarded the “Almost Great But Not Quite” Medal of Science. 

Perhaps the apple not falling gave humanity a different kind of momentum. We were forced to ask deeper questions, to think sideways, to wait a few hundred years longer to explain why socks don’t float off our feet.

And maybe, just maybe, that apple wasn’t lazy at all. Maybe it was teaching us patience.

In any case, the next time you see an apple fall, don’t just think of Newton. Think of what might have been if it had stayed right there—taunting him from the branch, quietly altering the course of human history by simply doing nothing at all.

Author’s Note: No apples were harmed in the making of this essay. Except the ones that didn't fall. They know what they did.