Newton, Knowledge and Genius

Yesterday’s lockdown homeschooling topic was ‘forces’. My daughters’ school helpfully sent us a link to a YouTube video about Isaac Newton, narrated by two small cartoon aliens. According to YouTube, Newton was the genius who discovered gravity. The little blue alien was not a genius like Newton, but he was suitably impressed by the revelation that Newton believed in God, and that God made gravity to stop us and the planets from flying away into outer space.

Cue a very deep breath. One of my daughters scored over the maximum score of 130 for both her maths and English (PUMA and PIRA) tests recently. The other scored in the top 10%. They are every bit as intelligent and capable as Newton, but they were clearly intended to identify with the aliens and not with Newton (a figure constructed as entirely unattainable, in a process not dissimilar to the canonisation of certain kinds of writers), and they did exactly that.

PUMA and PIRA have a ceiling limit of 130, which means they can’t discriminate above this threshold. A child who scores >130 could score 140 or 150 or 160 if the questions were harder and set to her level. Meanwhile, I pointed out that Newton didn’t exactly ‘discover’ gravity, since everyone ‘knew’ about the propensity of objects to fall towards the earth: all he actually did was name it, and then claim celebrity/genius status for doing so.

Naming something blindingly obvious to everyone of course, it not the same as explaining why it happens. The genius is in the attribution, and no self respecting scientist, I pointed out, would attribute a phenomenon like gravity to God in the absence of any supporting empirical evidence whatsoever. The little blue alien was more than satisfied with this explanation however, which is equally applicable to all named things, and I'm left wondering what on earth the state education system is busy teaching my very bright, very capable children about science??