Every great thinker has been aware of the work of his or her predecessors and highly responsive to them, and has usually had colleagues as well; and every great thinker has had to retire into solitude, often, in order to think really hard and without interruption. Even a suspicious recluse like Newton valued his interactions with members of the Royal Society, though he also tended to be deeply annoyed by his correspondents’ failures to understand him.
Complare deep work
