Leonardo da Vinci - Kathleen Krull [26]
Four hundred fifty years before the Wright brothers flew in 1903, Leonardo was designing flying machines in every form he could conceive of, with the certainty that one day human beings would take to the air.
And so on, and so on, in and out of the centuries. It is an amusing game, with the advantage of hindsight, to find Leonardo everywhere.
It is possible to exaggerate his discoveries, or to regard him as an isolated miracle man. But he wasn’t that isolated. Leonardo was able to draw from thinkers he admired. Sometimes all he did was point out the errors of his contemporaries. Sometimes he was wrong. And sometimes he leaped ahead in still mysterious ways as only geniuses are able to do. He was free to think what he pleased, with no university or school of thought stamped on his brain. But just the fact that he was delving into all these sciences is, for a man living in that long-ago world, stunning.
The big question is whether later scientists saw Leonardo’s work and thus were able, as Newton said, to “see further.” Because so much remained hidden away for so long, scientists after Leonardo carried on without his insights, unable to plant themselves atop his mighty shoulders and “see further.”
Still, it is possible that Galileo, for example, was familiar with some of Leonardo’s manuscripts. Also, we know that a later Dutch physicist had a brother who bought some Leonardo pages in London. In 1690, this physicist, named Christiaan Huygens, published his theory of the wavelike nature of light. Had he read about Leonardo’s earlier work on the same theory? No way to tell.
In any case, other scientists after Leonardo, who arrived at similar conclusions, received the credit.
Leaving a paper trail—sharing knowledge with others—is a critical part of science. Leonardo himself wrote, “Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.” But for many reasons, he never submitted his work for judgment by the outside world.
Still, it is hard to argue with the notion that, had the notebooks been published earlier, the history of science would have been completely different. Anyone, not just hardcore scientists, who sees pages of a Leonardo notebook is spellbound. People want to run out and do an experiment or draw something from nature. Even today, scholars studying the notebooks are unveiling more and more connections between Leonardo’s thoughts and current science. One historian called him “a man who wakes too early, while it is still dark and all around are sleeping.”
Okay, he was a genius; this much is obvious. But does that explain Leonardo da Vinci? No. Someone so phenomenally gifted will always evade rational explanation.
True, he was like a surfer on a huge wave—the spirit of intellectual tolerance fostered by the Renaissance, the empowering access to information supplied by the new printing presses. Yet he always remained out of step: a left-handed, illegitimate, homosexual, antiwar vegetarian with extraordinary artistic talent. His outsider status took him on paths others couldn’t even see.
So many tantalizing questions remain. If he had lived a century later, would he have been less of an outsider, more influential as part of the scientific mainstream? Would he ever have shared? Submitted his theories for review by peers? Published his work in a scientific journal?
In the final analysis, Leonardo can be credited not so much for specific discoveries as for a way of thinking. His devotion to scientific methods—investigating, observing, experimenting, and then forming conclusions—was revolutionary. He was open-minded, willing to toss out long-standing theories if he could disprove them.
Most intriguing of all is the question: What would Leonardo be doing if he were alive today?
LEONARDO’S NOTEBOOKS AND WHERE THEY ARE NOW
LEONARDO’S MANUSCRIPTS TODAY are nothing like the way they appeared and were grouped together during his lifetime. Although many pages are permanently lost, a chance still exists