History
In June 2002 a user named Jeff Stubbs posted a draft of a letter to the editor that mentions intelligent grappling to the alt.atheism and talk.origins usenet groups. He commented that "I don't like the theory of gravity, I feel personally insulted that engineers design structures only considering physical mass. What about our souls? I propose that science classes also teach the theory of "Intelligent Grappling". There's no way a weak force such as gravity can possibly hold everything onto the planet. It must be God, using our souls, to hold everything together." This was followed by a Elf Sternberg posting a "FAQ on intelligent grappling" on the sci.skeptic usenet group. D. C. Simpson published, in May 2005, an I Drew This comic strip titled "Teaching Gravity". This was followed by Joshua Rosenau, a graduate student at the University of Kansas, presenting the idea on his blog, citing Isaac Newton. Intelligent falling was the subject of an article in The Onion in August 2005.
In January 2010 Indian news satire website Faking News used the idea to write spoof news: "Apple dropped from Burj Dubai to validate Newton’s laws disappears". A Turkish Scientist, Prof. Dr. Esat Rennan Pekünlü of Ege University, mistakenly thought that IF was being proposed seriously, and wrote an article in the a popular science journal Cumhuriyet Bilim. He later retracted the article.
Read more about this topic: Intelligent Falling
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)