Art, Science and Creativity

Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci

Recently I read that artists were rated as the most unimportant people during the COVID-19 Pandemic. I beg to differ. The arts, science and the creativity that make both special and enterwine them together are the most vital... and this is true all of the time. 

A quiet period due to a pandemic worked for Newton. 

On July 25, 1665, a five-year-old boy named John Morley, of the parish of the Holy Trinity in Cambridge, England, was found dead in his home. The young boy was the first known case and death from the bubonic plague in Cambridge that year. London's spring outbreak of the bubonic plague had spread to Cambridge. The Cambridge residents raced to isolate themselves in the countryside. Isaac Newton, a young scholar of Trinity College also evacuated to his home in Lincolnshire. The family farm called Woolsthorpe was sixty miles north of the university and fairly remote from the neighbouring villages. Newton was in a creative solitude for the next two years. He worked on his projects that he wanted to solve. These included the invention of calculus, the mathematics of change, analytical geometry, the science of motion, the force of gravity, and more. 

Leonardo as a young man on the left

Leonardo da Vinci also survived a series of bubonic plagues that struck Milan between 1484 and 1485. That plague outbreak killed about 50,000 people which was a third of Milan's population. Leonardo was always working on his many projects - so much so that most of those projects were never completed. Leonardo must have used some of that quiet plague time to design concepts for a future city. Those plans were completed between 1487 and 1490 and can be found in the Paris Manuscript B.

Medieval cities like Milan were characterized by narrow, dirty and crowded streets. Travel and navigation within any city was difficult. Sewage was part of the street. Diseases like the plague spread easily. Leonardo envisioned a renaissance city with an open and modern design that emphasized aesthetics, cleanliness, and efficiency. Leonardo used a network of canals to move goods to and from market. Sanitation was a key part of his planned city. One of Leonardo's sketches even suggest multiple subways beneath the city to move goods and people. Leonardo was way ahead of his time back in 1484. Most modern cities would benefit even today from his insights. I would highly recommend the biography by Walter Isaacson entitled simply "Leonardo Da Vinci". That book tells the entire story of the renaissance genius.

Others were certainly in the same state of isolation due to the various plagues but did not manage to be quite as creative as da Vinci or Newton. That fact does not stop one from trying though. Maybe we can look at COVID as an opportunity to do something great - or at least try. What we must not do is to denigrate the worth of the artists and the scientists... just sayin'. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water, 

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick