The sentence is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to express that something cannot be interpreted without the context of the larger body of information around it. For example: "This phrase cannot be understood in isolation - it must be looked at in the context of the whole text."
The paper argues that Abu Dhabi's hydrosocial cycle cannot be understood in isolation of a consideration of energy, and, consequently, that the infeasibility of isolating water from wider physical, economic and social influences in complex contexts challenges previous approaches to the relationship between water and state power.
In terms of code-breaking, I came across a fascinating example recently of how engineering cannot be understood in isolation.
And so on: all the arts echo and borrow from the others, and simply cannot be understood in isolation from each other.
Recent work suggests that technological devices and their use cannot be understood in isolation, and must be viewed as part of an artifact ecology.
Feminist standpoint theories have developed substantially over the years, especially in response to feminist theorists' recognition that gender cannot be understood in isolation from other social categories.
The general point, on which most of the ancient and modern moralists would agree, is that being helpful cannot be understood in isolation from other values, aims, and traits that the individual has.
Suffering, like sin, cannot be understood in the abstract.
Secondly, that modality de re cannot be understood in terms of analyticity and therefore cannot be understood at all.
The approach itself is characterised by the principle that individual street segments cannot properly be understood in isolation, but must be considered in the context of the rest of the network and their position within it.
If Hegel's thought here is considered to be, like Spinoza's, holistic, it is only so at a higher level of abstraction, such that these determinations of singularity, particularity and universality cannot themselves be understood in isolation from each other but only via their complex interactions.
