When bubonic plague swept through England in 1665, Cambridge University was closed as a precaution. Newton retreated to the house in Woolsthorpe. Isolation is often an important ingredient in coming up with new ideas. Newton hid himself away in his room and thought. Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait ’til the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.
