Reflection of Isaac Newton History Essay Research Paper

Mainly an article about what Newton was doing during the plague. He was also a college student of twenty something. I hope that we use the article to build a kind of supporting group. Some of you may have already lost your part-time jobs. Some see your job opportunities, including internship, are quickly disappearing. Most of us have to adapt a radically different lifestyle. We may have a few always infected. It is challenging. But we need to rise to the occasion. I encourage every one of you to share your life and your plan. In this way, we help each other to cope with those unexpected challenges.
On this occasion, is history still help? Should we still spend a significant amount of time in our life studying history? Well, I happen to have a daughter who is a junior at NYU. About a year ago, I counseled her to get ready for a recession at her graduation. At that time, she was a little bit surprised because the jobs for new graduates were everywhere in New York. But I am a historian with our professional perspective. If we look at a long-term economic cycle, it is not difficult to see more than 50% chance for a recession in the years of 2020-2021 or 2021-2022. Some students may still remember that I shared this thought with them in our private conversation. Unfortunately, we are most likely heading a recession. And I think that history deserves some of our attention.
How should we respond to this challenge? How should we rise to the occasion? We Americans often talk about “working together.” I have nothing against the virtue of teamwork. However, under the current condition, we are not together. We are supposed to practice “self-isolation” and “social distancing.” In addition to “working together,” I need alternative strategy.
This is the reason that I assign this article about Newton. From my perspective, it is about the virtue of solitude. This is a very important personal quality that has been neglected by our education. Especially in this online age, our electronic devices are with us all the time. We are bombarded with all kinds of piecemeal information or misinformation at none-stop pace. We rarely have time to be really just by ourselves. But the most important contributions to our human society often require us to think through the issue or struggle with the problem alone in long hours.
Take a look at Newton’s story. He was forced into self-isolation by the plague for more than a year. But it turned out that this self-isolation became a golden opportunity for him. There is no doubt that some of his great ideas had already been seeded in his mind during his early years at Cambridge. But the more than a year of self-isolation gave him tremendous freedom, without being burdened by his course works and professors’ instruction. This kind of concentration accelerated his intellectual growth. So he left Cambridge as a regular student, but came back, just more than a year later, as a great scientist.

During a pandemic, Isaac Newton had to work from home, too. He used the time wisely.

By Gillian Brockell 

March 12, 2020

Isaac Newton was in his early 20s when the Great Plague of London hit. He wasn’t a “Sir” yet, didn’t have that big formal wig. He was just another college student at Trinity College, Cambridge.

It would be another 200 years before scientists discovered the bacteria that causes plague, but even without knowing exactly why, folks back then still practiced some of the same things we do to avoid illness.

In 1665, it was a version of “social distancing” — a public health tool making a comeback this week as governments, schools and many businesses, including The Washington Post, send people home to try to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Cambridge sent students home to continue their studies. For Newton, that meant Woolsthorpe Manor, the family estate about 60 miles northwest of Cambridge.

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.”

First, he continued to work on mathematical problems he had begun at Cambridge; the papers he wrote on this became early calculus.

Next, he acquired a few prisms and experimented with them in his bedroom, even going so far as to bore a hole in his shutters so only a small beam could come through. From this sprung his theories on optics.

And right outside his window at Woolsthorpe, there was an apple tree. That apple tree.

The story of how Newton sat under the tree, was bonked on the head by an apple and suddenly understood theories of gravity and motion, is largely apocryphal. But according to his assistant, John Conduitt, there’s an element of truth. Here’s how Conduitt later explained it:

“ … Whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the same power of gravity (which made an apple fall from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but must extend much farther than was usually thought. ‘Why not as high as the Moon?’ said he to himself..”

In London, a quarter of the population would die of plague from 1665 to 1666. It was one of the last major outbreaks in the 400 years that the Black Death ravaged Europe.

Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667, theories in hand. Within six months, he was made a fellow; two years later, a professor.

So if you’re working or studying from home over the next few weeks, perhaps remember the example Newton set. Having time to muse and experiment in unstructured comfort proved life-changing for him — and no one remembers whether he made it out of his pajamas before noon.