Description
Leonardo the scientist, not just the painter. We know Leonardo da Vinci as the painter of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper — but in The Science of Leonardo, physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra reveals him as one of history's greatest scientific minds. Drawing on Leonardo's thousands of surviving manuscript pages, Capra shows a thinker centuries ahead of his time: a keen observer of water flow, anatomy, optics, and mechanics who approached nature as a living, interconnected whole. Capra, best known for The Tao of Physics, argues that Leonardo was the first true systems thinker — an ecologist before ecology, whose method of close observation, sketching, and experimentation prefigured modern science.
What you will discover in this book goes far beyond the familiar paintings. Capra walks you through Leonardo's notebooks page by page, showing how the same hand that painted the Mona Lisa also dissected the human body, mapped the flow of rivers, designed flying machines, and studied the geometry of plants. You will see how Leonardo connected fields that modern science usually keeps apart: his studies of water taught him about blood circulation, his studies of light taught him about painting, and his studies of mechanics taught him about the movement of the human body. It is a portrait of curiosity without borders, and it explains why Leonardo's science feels surprisingly modern five hundred years later.
This book is for readers who love art, science, or the history of ideas — and especially for anyone who suspects that the divide between art and science is artificial. Students of the Renaissance will find a fresh framework for understanding Leonardo's notebooks, while general readers will enjoy one of the most accessible guides ever written to a famously intimidating genius. Capra writes clearly, with no technical background required, and the book is richly illustrated so you can follow Leonardo's thinking in his own drawings.
An illuminating read for anyone who wants to see Leonardo with new eyes. Get the ebook edition here at a discount from Tellebook.
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