These are fairy tales, and fairy tales do say something. They just don't say what they literally seem to be saying. They contain layers of symbolism, often saying things about the culture, the inventor, and the invention/discovery at the same time.
For example Newton's apple is interesting for its Genesis reference -- an apple from a tree. What is this myth actually saying about knowledge, science, and discovery? What's it saying about Newton? Newton was known to be a religious heretic and a practicing alchemist/occultist as well as a scientific thinker. You don't hear much about that, but you do get it in an indirect way via the apple symbolism I suppose. So perhaps the myth is a way of condensing down a lot of information about both the discovery (falling, gravity, mechanics) and the discoverer (heretic, religious outcast) into a single compact vignette.