> In today’s world, we are surrounded by too many distractions, and it is often hard to focus on things. I don't think that the example of Newton supports this

> In today’s world, we are surrounded by too many distractions, and it is often hard to focus on things. I don't think that the example of Newton supports this contrast of times. He was an extreme outlier in his day. He ignored distractions like "social activities" and "recreational activities. Extremely few people did that then or do so now. But, I bet there are way more people going to those extreme lengths these days, both in quantity and fraction. For the workaholic outliers, how much our modern society supports specialization is a much greater force than online distractions.