During these disruptive times, history provides both precedents and hope for what we are experiencing.
In 1666 England was wracked by the Great Plague, The Great Fire of London and the destruction of the English Fleet by the Dutch during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
But it was also the year a young Isaac Newton, during a period of self-isolation from the Great Plague, observed a falling apple to conceive the theory of gravity as well as theories on differential calculus, motion and optics. It was also the time when the great diarist Samuel Pepys chronicled daily life in plague-ridden London which became a definitive reference for future historians.
Daniel Defoe was similarly influenced by the Great Plague to conceive his novel about enforced isolation (for 28 years, two months and 19 days to be precise) of his semi-fictional character Robinson Crusoe. Defoe also wrote A Journal of the Plague Year which heralded the literary genre of historical fiction and was noteworthy for documenting the lurid daily death count called Bills of Mortality compiled by parish clergy.
After the Great Fire, London was re-built giving full expression to the momentous and epoch-defining architecture of Christopher Wren and the British navy was completely redeveloped which became the enabler for the era of global exploration and the Industrial Revolution a century later.
So the precedent of 1666 is that, despite great disruptions, the seeds for establishing a new and better world are sown.
The year 1666 has since been designated Annus Mirabilis – The Year of Wonders.
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