Leonardo's union of art, science, and design demonstrates the thinking needed to create sustainable societies.
When it comes to connecting art, science, and design, there can be no better inspiration than Leonardo da Vinci.
He was the great genius of the Renaissance, who not only connected
these three disciplines but fused them into a seamless whole in a unique
synthesis that has not been equaled before, nor afterwards. I have
studied Leonardo's synthesis for many years. I published a book, The Science of Leonardo,
in 2007; and I have now written about three quarters of a second book,
in which I go deeper into the various branches of his science.
Most authors who have discussed Leonardo's scientific work have
looked at it through Newtonian lenses. This has often prevented them
from understanding its essential nature, which is that of a science of
organic forms, of qualities, that is radically different from the
mechanistic science of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. And this is
precisely why Leonardo's science is so relevant today, especially for
education, as we are trying to see the world as an integrated whole,
making a perceptual shift from the parts to the whole, objects to
relationships, quantities to qualities.
The Empirical Method
In Western intellectual history, the Renaissance marks the period of
transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world. In the 1460s, when
the young Leonardo received his training as painter, sculptor, and
engineer in Florence, the worldview of his contemporaries was still
entangled in medieval thinking.
Science in the modern sense, as a systematic empirical method for
gaining knowledge about the natural world, did not exist. Knowledge
about natural phenomena had been handed down by Aristotle and other
philosophers of antiquity, and was fused with Christian doctrine by the
Scholastic theologians who presented it as the officially authorized
creed and condemned scientific experiments as subversive. Leonardo da
Vinci broke with this tradition:
"First I shall do some experiments before I proceed farther,
because my intention is to cite experience first and then with reasoning
show why such experience is bound to operate in such a way. And this is
the true rule by which those who speculate about the effects of nature
must proceed."
One hundred years before Galileo and Bacon, Leonardo single-handedly
developed a new empirical approach, involving the systematic observation
of nature, reasoning, and mathematics — in other words, the main
characteristics of what is known today as the scientific method.
Leonardo's approach to scientific knowledge was visual; it was the
approach of a painter. "Painting," he declares, "embraces within itself
all the forms of nature." I believe that this statement is the key to
understanding Leonardo's science. He asserts repeatedly that painting
involves the study of natural forms, and he emphasizes the intimate
connection between the artistic representation of those forms and the
intellectual understanding of their intrinsic nature and underlying
principles. For example, we read in a collection of his notes on
painting, known as the "Treatise on Painting":
"[Painting] with philosophic and subtle speculation considers all
the qualities of forms…. Truly this is science, the legitimate daughter
of nature, because painting is born of nature."
Nature as a whole was alive for Leonardo, and he saw the patterns and
processes in the microcosm as being similar to those in the macrocosm.
In particular, he frequently drew analogies between human anatomy and
the structure of the Earth, as in the following beautiful passage:
"We may say that the Earth has a vital force of growth, and that
its flesh is the soil; its bones are the successive strata of the rocks
which form the mountains; its cartilage is the porous rock, its blood
the veins of the waters. The lake of blood that lies around the heart is
the ocean. Its breathing is the increase and decrease of the blood in
the pulses, just as in the Earth it is the ebb and flow of the sea."
Systemic Thinker
Leonardo was what we would call, in today's scientific parlance, a
systemic thinker. Understanding a phenomenon, for him, meant connecting
it with other phenomena through a similarity of patterns. When he
studied the proportions of the human body, he compared them to the
proportions of buildings in Renaissance architecture; his investigations
of muscles and bones led him to study and draw gears and levers, thus
interlinking animal physiology and engineering; patterns of turbulence
in water led him to observe similar patterns in the flow of air; and
from there he went on to explore the nature of sound, the theory of
music, and the design of musical instruments.
This exceptional ability to interconnect observations and ideas from
different disciplines lies at the very heart of Leonardo's approach to
learning and research, and this is something that is very much needed
today, as the problems of our world become ever more interconnected and
can only be understood and solved if we learn how to think systemically —
in terms of relationships, patterns, and context.
While Leonardo's manuscripts gathered dust in ancient European
libraries, Galileo was celebrated as the "father of modern science." One
cannot help but wonder how Western scientific thought might have
developed had Leonardo's notebooks been known and widely studied soon
after his death.
Leonardo's Legacy
Leonardo did not pursue science and engineering to dominate nature,
as Francis Bacon would advocate a century later. He abhorred violence
and had a special compassion for animals. He was a vegetarian because he
did not want to cause animals pain by killing them for food. He would
buy caged birds in the marketplace and set them free, and would observe
their flight not only with a sharp observational eye but also with great
empathy.
Instead of trying to dominate nature, Leonardo's intent was to learn
from her as much as possible. He was in awe of the beauty he saw in the
complexity of natural forms, patterns, and processes, and aware that
nature's ingenuity was far superior to human design. "Though human
ingenuity in various inventions uses different instruments for the same
end," he declared, "it will never discover an invention more beautiful,
easier, or more economical than nature's, because in her inventions
nothing is wanting and nothing is superfluous."
This attitude of seeing nature as a model and mentor is now being
rediscovered in the practices of ecological design and biomimicry. Like
Leonardo, ecodesigners today study the patterns and flows in the natural
world and try to incorporate the underlying principles into their
design processes. This attitude of appreciation and respect of nature is
based on a philosophical stance that does not view humans as standing
apart from the rest of the living world but rather as being
fundamentally embedded in, and dependent upon, the entire community of
life in the biosphere.
Today, this philosophical stance is promoted by the school of thought
known as "deep ecology." Shallow ecology views humans as above or
outside the natural world, as the source of all value, and ascribes only
instrumental, or "use," value to nature. Deep ecology, by contrast,
does not separate humans — or anything else — from the natural
environment. It sees the living world as being fundamentally
interconnected and interdependent and recognizes the intrinsic value of
all living beings. Amazingly, Leonardo's notebooks contain an explicit
articulation of that view:
"The virtues of grasses, stones, and trees do not exist because
humans know them.… Grasses are noble in themselves without the aid of
human languages or letters."
In view of this deep ecological awareness and of Leonardo's systemic
way of thinking, it is not surprising that he spoke with great disdain
of the so-called "abbreviators," the reductionists of his time:
"The abbreviators do harm to knowledge and to love.... Of what
use is he who, in order to abridge the part of the things of which he
professes to give complete knowledge, leaves out the greater part of the
things of which the whole is composed?… Oh human stupidity!... Don't
you see that you fall into the same error as he who strips a tree of its
adornment of branches laden with leaves, intermingled with fragrant
flowers or fruit, in order to demonstrate the suitability of the tree
for making planks?"
This statement is not only revealing testimony of Leonardo's way of
thinking, but is also ominously prophetic. Reducing the beauty of life
to mechanical parts and valuing trees only for making planks is an
eerily accurate characterization of the mindset that dominates our world
today. This, in my view, is the main reason why Leonardo's legacy is
immensely relevant to our time.
As we recognize that our sciences and technologies have become
increasingly narrow in their focus, unable to understand our
multi-faceted problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, and
dominated by corporations more interested in financial rewards than in
the well-being of humanity, we urgently need a science that honors and
respects the unity of all life, recognizes the fundamental
interdependence of all natural phenomena, and reconnects us with the
living Earth. What we need today is exactly the kind of science Leonardo
da Vinci anticipated and outlined 500 years ago.
This essay is adapted from lectures delivered by Fritjof Capra at
the Center for Ecoliteracy's seminar "Sustainability Education:
Connecting Art, Science, and Design," August 16–18, 2010.
New Lessons from Leonardo
In
order to reconnect to the natural world today, Fritjof Capra suggests
we need to embrace the same elements Leonardo outlined 500 years ago.
This essay is adapted from a talk in which Fritjof Capra discusses some of the findings described in his latest book, Learning from Leonardo: Decoding the Notebooks of a Genius (2013: Berrett-Koehler Publishers).
Leonardo da Vinci, the great genius of the Renaissance, developed and
practiced a unique synthesis of art, science, and technology, which is
not only extremely interesting in its conception but also very relevant
to our time.
As we recognize that our sciences and technologies have become
increasingly narrow in their focus, unable to understand our
multi-faceted problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, we
urgently need a science and technology that honor and respect the unity
of all life, recognize the fundamental interdependence of all natural
phenomena, and reconnect us with the living Earth. What we need today is
exactly the kind of synthesis Leonardo outlined 500 years ago.
A science of living forms
At the core of Leonardo's synthesis lies his life-long quest for
understanding the nature of the living forms of nature. He asserts
repeatedly that painting involves the study of natural forms, of
qualities, and he emphasizes the intimate connection between the
artistic representation of those forms and the intellectual
understanding of their intrinsic nature and underlying principles. In
order to paint nature's living forms, Leonardo felt that he needed a
scientific understanding of their intrinsic nature and underlying
principles, and in order to analyze the forms of nature, he needed the
artistic ability to draw them. His science cannot be understood without
his art, nor his art without the science.
The quest for the secret of life
I have been fascinated by the genius of Leonardo Lea Vinci and have
spent the last ten years studying his scientific writings in facsimile
editions of his famous notebooks. In my new book, I present an in-depth
discussion of the main branches of Leonardo's scientific work — his
fluid dynamics, geology, botany, mechanics, science of flight, and
anatomy. Most of his astonishing discoveries and achievements in these
fields are virtually unknown to the general public.
What emerged from my explorations of all the branches of Leonardo's
science was the realization that, at the most fundamental level,
Leonardo always sought to understand the nature of life. My main thesis
is that the science of Leonardo da Vinci is a science of living forms,
radically different from the mechanistic science of Galileo, Descartes,
and Newton that emerged 200 years later.
This has often escaped earlier commentators, because until recently
the nature of life was defined by biologists only in terms of cells and
molecules, to which Leonardo, living two centuries before the invention
of the microscope, had no access. But today, a new systemic
understanding of life is emerging at the forefront of science — an
understanding in terms of metabolic processes and their patterns of
organization; and those are precisely the phenomena which Leonardo
explored throughout his life, both in the macrocosm of the Earth and in
the microcosm of the human body.
In the macrocosm, the main themes of Leonardo's science were the
movements of water, the geological forms and transformations of the
Earth, and the botanical diversity and growth patterns of plants. In the
microcosm, his main focus was on the human body — its beauty and
proportions, the mechanics of its movements, and the understanding of
the nature and origin of life. Let me give you a very brief summary of
his achievements in these diverse scientific fields.
The movements of water
Leonardo was fascinated by water in all its manifestations. He
recognized its fundamental role as life's medium and vital fluid, as the
matrix of all organic forms: "It is the expansion and humor of all
living bodies," he wrote. "Without it nothing retains its original
form." This view of the essential role of water in biological life is
fully borne out by modern science. Today we know not only that all
living organisms need water for transporting nutrients to their tissues,
but also that life on Earth began in water, and that for billions of
years, all the cells that compose living organisms have continued to
flourish and evolve in watery environments. So, Leonardo was completely
correct in viewing water as the carrier and matrix of life.
Throughout his life, Leonardo studied its movements and flows, drew
and analyzed its waves and vortices. He experimented not only with water
but also investigated the flows of blood, wine, oil, and even those of
sand and grains. He was the first to formulate the basic principles of
flow, and he recognized that they are the same for all fluids. These
observations establish Leonardo da Vinci as a pioneer in the discipline
known today as fluid dynamics.
Leonardo's manuscripts are full of exquisite drawings of spiraling
vortices and other patterns of turbulence in water and air, which until
now have never been analyzed in detail, because the physics of turbulent
flows is notoriously difficult. In this book, I present an in-depth
analysis of Leonardo's drawings of turbulent flows, based on extensive
discussions with Ugo Piomelli, professor of fluid dynamics at Queen's
University in Canada, who very generously helped me to analyze all of
Leonardo's drawings and descriptions of turbulent flows.
The living Earth
Leonardo saw water as the chief agent in the formation of the Earth's
surface. This awareness of the continual interaction of water and rocks
impelled him to undertake extensive studies in geology, which informed
the fantastic rock formations that appear so often in the shadowy
backgrounds of his paintings. His geological observations are stunning
not only by their great accuracy, but also because they led him to
formulate general principles that were rediscovered only centuries later
and are still used by geologists today.
Leonardo was the first to postulate that the forms of the Earth are
the result of slow processes taking place over long epochs of what we
now call geological time.
With this view, Leonardo was centuries ahead of his time. Geologists
became aware of the great duration of geological time only in the early
19th century with the work of Charles Lyell, who is often considered the
father of modern geology.
Leonardo was also the first to identify folds of rock strata. His
descriptions of how rocks are formed over enormously long periods of
time in layers of sedimentation and are subsequently shaped and folded
by powerful geological forces come close to an evolutionary perspective.
He arrived at this perspective 300 years before Charles Darwin, who
also found inspiration for evolutionary thought in geology.
The growth of plants
Leonardo's notebooks contain numerous drawings of trees and flowering
plants, many of them masterpieces of detailed botanical imagery. These
drawings were at first made as studies for paintings, but soon turned
into genuine scientific inquiries about the patterns of metabolism and
growth that underlie all botanical forms. Leonardo paid special
attention to the nourishment of plants by sunlight and water, and to the
transport of the sap through the plants' tissues.
He correctly distinguished between the dead outer layer of a tree's
bark and the living inner bark, known to botanists as the phloem, which
he called very aptly "the shirt that lies between the bark and the
wood." He was also the first to recognize that the age of a tree
corresponds to the number of rings in the cross-section of its trunk,
and — even more remarkably — that the width of a growth ring is an
indication of the climate during the corresponding year. As in so many
other fields, Leonardo carried his botanical thinking far beyond that of
his peers, establishing himself as the first great theorist in botany.
The human body in motion
Whenever Leonardo explored the forms of nature in the macrocosm, he
also looked for similarities of patterns and processes in the human
body. In order to study the body's organic forms, he dissected numerous
corpses of humans and animals, and examined their bones, joints,
muscles, and nerves, drawing them with an accuracy and clarity never
seen before. Leonardo demonstrated in countless elaborate and stunning
drawings how nerves, muscles, tendons and bones work together to move
the body.
Unlike Descartes, Leonardo never thought of the body as a machine,
even though he was a brilliant engineer who designed countless machines
and mechanical devices. He clearly recognized that the anatomies of
animals and humans involve mechanical functions. "Nature cannot give
movement to animals without mechanical instruments," he explained, but
that did not imply for him that living organisms were machines. It only
implied that, in order to understand the movements of the animal body,
he needed to explore the principles of mechanics. Indeed, he saw this as
the most "noble" role of this branch of science.
Elements of mechanics
To understand in detail how nature's "mechanical instruments" work
together to move the body, Leonardo immersed himself in prolonged
studies of problems involving weights, forces, and movements — the
branches of mechanics known today as statics, dynamics, and kinematics.
While he studied the elementary principles of mechanics in relation to
the movements of the human body, he also applied them to the design of
numerous new machines, and as his fascination with the science of
mechanics grew, he explored ever more complex topics, anticipating
abstract principles that were centuries ahead of his time.
These include his understanding of the relativity of motion, his
discovery of the principle now known as Newton's third law of motion,
his intuitive grasp of the conservation of energy, and — perhaps most
remarkably — his anticipation of the law of energy dissipation, the
second law of thermodynamics. Although there are many books on
Leonardo's mechanical engineering, there is as yet none on his
theoretical mechanics. In the longest chapter of this book, I provide an
in-depth analysis of this important branch of Leonardo's science.
The science of flight
From the texts that accompany Leonardo's anatomical drawings we know
that he considered the human body as an animal body, as biologists do
today; and thus it is not surprising that he compared human movements
with the movements of various animals. What fascinated him more than any
other animal movement was the flight of birds. It was the inspiration
for one of the great passions in his life — the dream of flying.
The dream of flying like a bird is as old as humanity itself. But
nobody pursued it with more intensity, perseverance, and commitment to
meticulous research than Leonardo da Vinci. His science of flight
involved numerous disciplines — from aerodynamics to human anatomy, the
anatomy of birds, and mechanical engineering.
In my chapter on Leonardo's science of flight, I analyze his drawings
and writings on this subject in some detail, and I come to the
conclusion that he had a clear understanding of the origin of
aerodynamic lift, that he fully understood the essential features of
both soaring and flapping flight, and that he was the first to recognize
the principle of the wind tunnel — that a body moving through
stationary air is equivalent to air flowing over a stationary body. This
establishes Leonardo da Vinci as one of the great pioneers of
aerodynamics.
In his numerous designs of flying machines, Leonardo attempted to
imitate the complex flapping and gliding movements of birds. Many of
these designs were based on sound aerodynamic principles, and it was
only the weight of the materials available in the Renaissance that
prevented him from building viable models.
The mystery of life
As I have mentioned, the grand unifying theme of Leonardo's
explorations of the macro- and microcosm was his persistent quest to
understand the nature of life. This quest reached its climax in the
anatomical studies he carried out in Milan and Rome when he was over
sixty, especially in his investigations of the heart — the bodily organ
that has served as the foremost symbol of human existence and emotional
life throughout the ages. He not only understood and pictured the heart
in ways no one had before him; he also observed subtleties in its
actions that would elude medical researchers for centuries.
During the last decade of his life, Leonardo became intensely
interested in another aspect of the mystery of life — its origin in the
processes of reproduction and embryonic development. In his
embryological studies, he described the life processes of the fetus in
the womb, including its nourishment through the umbilical cord, in
astonishing detail. Leonardo's embryological drawings are graceful and
touching revelations of the mysteries surrounding the origins of life.
Leonardo knew very well that, ultimately, the nature and origin of
life would remain a mystery, no matter how brilliant his scientific
mind. "Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in
experience," he declared in his late forties, and as he got older, his
sense of mystery deepened. Nearly all the figures in his last paintings
have that smile that expresses the ineffable, often combined with a
pointing finger. "Mystery to Leonardo," wrote the famous art historian
Kenneth Clark, "was a shadow, a smile, and a finger pointing into
darkness."
Links:
https://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/what-we-can-learn-leonardo
https://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/new-lessons-leonardo
