Many lament the restrictions that socially distancing orders have placed on us.

That is
understandable. But perhaps, if we focus on the positive, there is an upside to our new situation as well.

For today’s students, at least, our new post-Covid conditions of life should afford more time for direct and unfettered engagement with and exploration of great works and ideas. Indeed, it was in under similar conditions that some of the greatest works that we have come to admire and learn from were first produced.

There can be hardly a finer example of this that the situation in which Sir Isaac Newton found himself. In response to the pandemic that took hold in his day and age – the great plaque – he was sent home from Trinity College Cambridge. As this Washington Post article relates, there he continued to grapple with mathematical puzzles and began to conduct his own experiments – and, as a result, he developed his theory of optics, leaving us some of his most important work.

“Without his professors to guide him, Newton apparently thrived. The year-plus he spent away was later referred to as his annus mirabilis, the ‘year of wonders.’”  The rest, is, as they say, history – a history that lead to Newton’s great and lasting contribution to a rich legacy of ideas.

We can take a leaf out of Newton’s book in our troubled times. Engaging with the great works that form part of that legacy can push us to think further and better about important topics, so long as we  too manage to tap into the same animating spirit of free inquiry that moved Newton.