nothing he designed was ever used to injure anyone during his lifetime. A man of peace, he referred to war as “pazzia bestialissima – beastly madness,” and found bloodshed “infinitely atrocious.” His instruments of war were designed “to preserve the chief gift of nature, which is liberty,” he wrote. At times he shared them reluctantly, accompanying one design with a written glimpse of his ambivalence: “I do not wish to divulge or publish this because of the evil nature of men.”
Leonardo the scientist is the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Some scholars suggest that if Leonardo had organized his scientific thoughts and published them, he would have had a massive influence on the development of science. Others argue that he was so far ahead of his time that his work would not have been appreciated even if it was formulated in comprehensible general theories. While Leonardo’s science may best be appreciated for its intrinsic value as an expression of his quest for truth, most scholars agree that he can be credited with significant contributions to several disciplines:
Scythed chariot and “tank”.
Anatomy
Botany
Geology and Physics
Leonardo’s investigations led him to anticipate many great scientific discoveries including breakthroughs by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin.
40 years before Copernicus – Da Vinci noted, in large letters for emphasis, “IL SOLE NO SI MUOVE,” “The sun does not move.” He added, “The earth is not in the center of the circle of the sun, nor in the center of the universe.”
60 years before Galileo – He suggested that “a large magnifying lens” should be employed to study the surface of the moon and other heavenly bodies.
200 years before Newton – Anticipating the theory of gravitation, Leonardo wrote, “Every weight tends to fall towards the center by the shortest possible way.” And elsewhere he added that because “every heavy substance presses downward, and cannot be upheld perpetually, the whole earth must become spherical.”
400 years before Darwin – He placed man in the same broad category as monkeys and apes and wrote, “Man does not vary from the animals except in what is accidental.”
More valuable than any of his specific scientific achievements, Leonardo’s approach to knowledge set the stage for modern scientific thinking.
Self-portrait in red chalk.
Curiosità An Insatiably Curious Approach to Life and an Unrelenting Quest for Continuous Learning.
All of us come into the world curious. Curiosità builds upon that natural impulse, the same impulse that led you to turn the last page – the desire to learn more. We’ve all got it; the challenge is using and developing it for our own benefit. In the first years of life our minds are engaged in an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. From birth – and some would argue, even before – the baby’s every sense is attuned to exploring and learning. Like little scientists, babies experiment with everything in their environment. As soon as they can speak, children start articulating question after question: “Mommy, how does this work?” “Why was I born?” “Daddy, where do babies come from?”
“The desire to know is natural to good men.”
– LEONARDO DA VINCI
As a child, Leonardo possessed this intense curiosity about the world around him. He was fascinated with nature, showed a remarkable gift for drawing, and loved mathematics. Vasari records that the young Leonardo questioned his mathematics teacher with such originality that “he raised continuous doubts and difficulties for the master who taught him and often confounded him.”
Great minds go on asking confounding questions with the same intensity throughout their lives. Leonardo’s childlike sense of wonder and insatiable curiosity, his breadth and depth of interest, and his willingness to question accepted knowledge never abated. Curiosità fueled the wellspring of his genius throughout his adult life.
What were Leonardo’s motives? In his book The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination, Pulitzer prize-winner Daniel Boorstin tells us what they were not. “Unlike Dante, he had no passion for a woman. Unlike Giotto, Dante, or Brunelleschi, he seemed to have had no civic loyalty. Nor devotion to church or Christ. He willingly accepted commissions from the Medici, the Sforzas, the Borgias, or French kings – from the popes or their enemies. He lacked the sensual worldliness of a Boccaccio or a Chaucer, the recklessness of a Rabelais, the piety of a Dante, or the religious passion of a Michelangelo.” Leonardo’s loyalty, devotion, and passion were directed, instead, to the pure quest for truth and beauty. As Freud suggested: “He transmuted his passion into inquisitiveness.”
Leonardo’s inquisitiveness was not limited to his formal studies; it informed and enhanced his daily experience of the world around him. In a typical passage from the notebooks Da Vinci asks: “Do you not see how many and how varied are the actions which are performed by men alone? Do you not see how many different