Leonardo da Vinci

But his uncanny abilities to engage in the dialogue between experience and theory made him a prime example of how acute observations, fanatic curiosity, experimental testing, a willingness to question dogma, and the ability to discern patterns across disciplines can lead to great leaps in human understanding.

Piatti told his uncle that he was one of many participants in a public-support campaign: “This task is for me somewhat of an obligation because Leonardo is indeed a good friend of mine. I do not doubt that the same request was made by the same artist to many others, who are probably better qualified than myself to express the same thing.” Neverthel

Even though it was typical of him, we still should marvel that he would decide that before sculpting a horse he had to dissect one. Once again his compulsion to engage in anatomical investigations for his art eventually led him to pursue the science for its own sake. We can see this process unfold as he worked on the horse: careful measurements and

His engineering instincts led him to envision some ingenious conveniences: the windows of the studio should have adjustable blinds so the light could be easily controlled, and the painting easels should be on platforms that could be raised and lowered with pulleys, “so that it would be the painting, not the painter, that would move up and down.”

Leonardo did not invent the scientific method, nor did Aristotle or Alhazen or Galileo or any Bacon. But his uncanny abilities to engage in the dialogue between experience and theory made him a prime example of how acute observations, fanatic curiosity, experimental testing, a willingness to question dogma, and the ability to discern patterns acros

We can imagine what his studio looked like, in reality or at least in Leonardo’s imagination, from a description he wrote of an artist at work: “The painter sits in front of his work at perfect ease. He is well dressed and wields a very light brush dipped in delicate color. He adorns himself with the clothes he fancies; his home is clean and filled

The empirical method used by Bacon emphasized a cycle: observations should lead to a hypothesis, which should then be tested by precise experiments, which would then be used to refine the original hypothesis. Bacon also recorded and reported his experiments in precise detail so that others could independently replicate and verify them.

On a deeper level, Leonardo’s homosexuality seems to have been manifest in his sense of himself as somewhat different, an outsider who didn’t quite fit in.

Some writers, following Freud’s unsubstantiated assertions that Leonardo’s “passive homosexual” desires were “sublimated,” have speculated that his desires were repressed and channeled into his work. One of his maxims seems to give support to the theory that he believed in controlling his sexual urges: “Whoever does not curb lustful desires puts hi