Personal Choice

Personal Choice Blog:

With college rapidly approaching, I am constantly thinking about the benefits and substantial costs of going to a university. There is always a debate raging in my head; is a degree worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and over four years without any work experience in my intended field? Most of the time I think that college is absolute necessity but I am curious to know who, throughout the entire scope of humanity, was successful by going through an unconventional academic process.

One of the most famous and influential – also my personal favorite – scientist throughout history was Isaac Newton.  Unlike most academics in the 1600s, Newton was born to a poor farming family in England. The combination of his overall poor farming skills, a hoard of physically capable siblings and his enthusiasm for education enabled his parents to send Newton to Cambridge with the intent to become a preacher. While at Cambridge, Newton mainly studied mathematics instead of the clergy, much to his parents’ disappointment. Strongly influenced by Euclid and by the Baconian and Cartesian philosophies, Newton was fascinated be the simple mechanisms of the world.

Disaster struck when Newton was forced to leave Cambridge due to the recent outbreak of the plague that swept across Europe. Newton went back to his family farm, unable to continue his formal education for over two years. However, it was during this leave from school that Newton formulated his groundbreaking new ideas. He created the basis for the modern sciences of mechanics, optics and calculus, which became the critical components of Newton’s iconic mathematics book The Principia.

From understanding a mundane aspect of life, gravity, to grasping the intangible, the nature of light, and continuing an age long subject, calculus, Newton derived these ideas while watching fruit fall from his family’s apple tree. He was able to calculate the circumference of the earth, the exact orbital of Hailey’s comet, and predict the upcoming solar eclipse without ever leaving his family farm. In collaboration with other renowned scientists such as Robert Hooke and Flamsteed, Newton made huge improvements in our understanding of the mechanics of the earth and, concomitantly, the astronomical interactions.

I find it surprising that Newton was enabled by the lack of traditional schooling, rather than a total emersion in an academic culture, to discover the mechanics, optics and calculus. Is a purely academic culture productive for scientific innovation or stifling due people’s fear of being wrong? Newton definitely took an unusual route to achieve academic fame with his interruption of school because of the dreaded plague. I wonder if it is helpful for modern college students to take a year or two off to pursue their own interests. Maybe one student will achieve their own Newtonian notions.