The da Vinci in all of us
“Five hundred years ago, in 1519, the remarkable life of Leonardo da Vinci came to an end. In commemorating him, it’s worth pausing from our regular day-to-day activities to think about what made him such a remarkable engineer, designer, musician, artist, mathematician, cartographer, physicist, biologist and more. ”
The feature article of the May 2019 issue of National Geographic Magazine is titled Leonardo’s Enduring Brilliance and is written by Claudia Klab. While reading the article, I highlighted all the personal characteristics attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci and compiled a list that I hope will inspire us to be more like him as we try to improve in our design and engineering pursuits.
Here’s the list I generated from the article:
Leonardo was a curious note-taker and truth-seeker.
He believed in the precepts of science – observation, hypothesis, experiment.
He made acute observations and then documented his findings in his notebooks.
He sketched to make sense of unknowns.
He launched experiments to gain understanding.
He put everything to the test.
He documented everything in magnificent detail.
Some say his greatest gift was his ability to make knowledge visible.
Leonardo researched.
He did away with traditional things by challenging them.
He had an unparalleled ability to push past the work of his forbearers. He did this by cross-examining his subjects and overturning his own verdicts.
He brainstormed, exploring multiple designs for a single problem.
His work reveals copious revisions. He understood and used iteration to help evolve his ideas.
He filled his notebooks with inventions.
He devised plans.
He found inspiration in nature.
He was honest in his interpretation of nature and biology.
His visual acuity was driven by his abiding faith in nature’s design. He says “Human ingenuity will never devise any invention more beautiful or more simple, or more to the purpose than nature. Because in her inventions nothing is wanting and nothing is superfluous.”
He had an unfettered way of leaping between subject matter; between art, science, math, music, and more.
He scrutinized minutiae: Geometric angles, the dilation of the pupil, bounding from one discipline to the next while seeking links between them.
Leonardo was a collaborator.
He was an apprentice, so he sought truth from the people who taught him.
He was willing to consider absurd, “out-there” things. His notebooks also include more tentative musings that “flicker with possibility”.
Leonardo pursued knowledge voraciously. He saw no end in his pursuit of knowledge. He was continuously curious.
Wow! Those are remarkable characteristics. At least in a small way, I hope to adopt at least something on that list and work to make it mine, to make it part of who I am, and to make it innate in how I approach the amazing gift of creativity.
