Newton's Laws of Shit Happening

Newton could have very easily said “Ow, an apple hit me on the head!” And then shrugged his shoulders to add, ”Shit happens!”

In 1665 Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motions. With them he accidentally, and much to the chagrin of schoolchildren everywhere, invented calculus. He took a descriptive philosophy on the physical nature of things, slapped some previously unknown math on them, and came up with a whole new predictive way of looking at the world—hell, the universe. Not too shabby for having an apple fall on your head. That apple could just as well have been written off as a “shit happens” moment. Newton could have very easily said “Ow, an apple hit me on the head!” And then shrugged his shoulders to add, ”Shit happens!”

But he didn’t. This crazy cat said “Ow, an apple hit me on the head!” And then shrugged his shoulders to add, “I’m going to invent the laws of motion!”

THE LAWS OF MOTION

Here are the laws that Newton came up with that undergird¹ modern physics and engineering—because an apple fell on his head:

1. An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by another force.

2. The force of an object is equal to its mass multiplied by its speed.

3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

THE LAWS OF SHIT HAPPENING

If Newton would have stuck with the more common reaction to being hit on the head with an apple i.e. “shit happens” and applied the same laws, he would have still been correct. Behold the similarities!

1. An object in motion will stay in motion unless shit happens.

2. Shit that happens is equal to its mass multiplied by its speed.

3. For all the shit that happens there is equal and opposite shit that happens.

Law #1 of Shit Happening

For this exercise we are going to consider that you are the object in motion. You have set a goal. You have a plan. You are moving headlong toward your goal. You are, what is known in the scientific community as, an object in motion. Look at you go!

Law #2 of Shit Happening

Life is chaotic and inevitably shit will happen. The shit that happens has mass (how much shit is happening) and speed (how fast does the shit happen).

Law #3 of Shit Happening

It is your intention to stay on the trajectory you have set for yourself. You have mass and you have speed. Thus you have force! But, for you, as the glorious object in motion that you are, to be thrown off course the shit that happens needs to have enough of its own force to throw you off your trajectory.

The question becomes: Are you more forceful than the shit that happens, or is the shit more forceful than you? Just as a casual reminder: when Isaac Newton had shit happen to him, he invented calculus.

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1. Ha, I made you think of the word “undergird” which I think is a funny word.