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How can officials creatively use this opportunity to create stronger cities? by Scott Paine Florida League of Cities
O
ne of the most familiar images of scientific discovery is that of Isaac Newton’s revelation about gravity that resulted from an apple falling on his head. No pain, no gain, they say. While the image is familiar, most of us probably aren’t aware that this revelation also was an indirect consequence of an epidemic. The apple fell during the two years Newton spent back in his native Lincolnshire because a bubonic plague epidemic was affecting Cambridge. Isolated from his student peers and the pressures of academic life, he experienced what he described as “the prime of my age for invention.” Two years of quiet, of time to think deeply, to write and rewrite, to think again, to discover, to analyze, to test. Newton transformed our understanding of mathematics and much of the physical world. He might have done all that with or without the plague that drove him home.
20 QUALITY CITIES | THIRD QUARTER 2021
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