Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
I had always wondered about Leonardo, but never knew much about him or why he is considered to be THE master. Now I know. As much a scientist as an artist, Leonardo was obsessed with observing the natural world and understanding how it worked. He used the knowledge he gained to fuel his art, which in turn powered his ability to further observe the world using highly realistic drawings.
He articulated Newton's law of motion centuries before Newton lived. He utilized the scientific method well before the enlightenment. He filled notebooks with ratios concerning different body parts (e.g., the length of the foot is 1/7th the length of the body).
And his ability to look at the world closely revolutionized art itself. Leonardo realized that objects don't have distinct outlines--that forms a distinguished by changes in color, light, and shade. He realized that perspective mandated that objects nearer to the viewer must be more clear and detailed than objects father away. He studied how light hit the retinas to further refine perspective, especially for his larger works like the Last Supper. And he saw that colors in direct light were purer than colors in the shade. All of this and more.
I can't wait to see his work in the future with a new appreciation for what makes him the master. And his life is a lesson to stay curious.
He articulated Newton's law of motion centuries before Newton lived. He utilized the scientific method well before the enlightenment. He filled notebooks with ratios concerning different body parts (e.g., the length of the foot is 1/7th the length of the body).
And his ability to look at the world closely revolutionized art itself. Leonardo realized that objects don't have distinct outlines--that forms a distinguished by changes in color, light, and shade. He realized that perspective mandated that objects nearer to the viewer must be more clear and detailed than objects father away. He studied how light hit the retinas to further refine perspective, especially for his larger works like the Last Supper. And he saw that colors in direct light were purer than colors in the shade. All of this and more.
I can't wait to see his work in the future with a new appreciation for what makes him the master. And his life is a lesson to stay curious.
Listened to the audio book. It took me a while to get used to the narrator, but it was really well executed. Also, make sure you have the associated PDF (111 pages filled with a timeline, pictures of referenced works, and other useful information) before you listen to this book.
So can you have spoilers on a biography of someone as well known as Leonardo da Vinci? He dies towards the end. Anyway...
Isaacson is enthralled by the overlap of science and creativity, and Leonardo is possibly the ultimate human example of this. The book certainly makes a compelling case.
I thoroughly enjoyed the history and the facts covered, but I could have done without some of the speculation and interpretations by the author (however well defended). Specifically, I’d rather the facts be provided and let the reader make a judgment.
The biggest surprise to me was the depth of Leonardo’s contribution to anatomy (human and animal). His drama with Michelangelo and interactions with Machiavelli were news to me as well.
Overall, it was a rewarding experience.
So can you have spoilers on a biography of someone as well known as Leonardo da Vinci? He dies towards the end. Anyway...
Isaacson is enthralled by the overlap of science and creativity, and Leonardo is possibly the ultimate human example of this. The book certainly makes a compelling case.
I thoroughly enjoyed the history and the facts covered, but I could have done without some of the speculation and interpretations by the author (however well defended). Specifically, I’d rather the facts be provided and let the reader make a judgment.
The biggest surprise to me was the depth of Leonardo’s contribution to anatomy (human and animal). His drama with Michelangelo and interactions with Machiavelli were news to me as well.
Overall, it was a rewarding experience.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
Learned a lot about one of the very few true geniuses history has given us. One major gripe I had with this book is with the writing: the endless repetition of some of the key ideas was immensely annoying by the time I finished the book. Possibly, the translation to Dutch is partly at fault as well but I suspect this is inherent in the content itself.
I also had a feeling there is much more to be told, will be looking for other biographies.
Apart from that, really interesting read, would definitely recommend!
I also had a feeling there is much more to be told, will be looking for other biographies.
Apart from that, really interesting read, would definitely recommend!
informative
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
'His notebooks are the greatest record of curiosity ever created, a wondrous guide to the person whom the eminent art historian Kenneth Clark called "the most relentlessly curious man in history."'
A single noun cannot pin down Leonardo. He cannot be cajoled into fixing in one enterprise, for a man who is the Renaissance man, boundaries seem non-existent by believing that 'the infinite works of nature, are woven together in a unity filled with marvelous patterns. ' What transcendence to perceive the world in that way! As he had 'a reverence for the wholeness of nature and feel for the harmony of its patterns ', it's such an interesting philosophy to build a foundation on. Imagine you subscribed to that: when you read the biographies of Napoleon or the court of Catherine the Great, in parallel you would see the physics that composes each of those figures, the architecture of their time, the different economic systems employed. That unity is the reality of the situation, no event is without threads which bundle together to make a complex scene arise. It is only in our biological shortcuts that we stereotype, categorise, and shut out complexity. By never losing sight of the 10,000 things, Leonardo became what he became. And I imagine his moment to moment experience was the much richer for it.
This led to him not just painting the Lady of Ermine, but but he also studied intently the fossils on mountains, the way water flowed, designing towns, optics (which were actually parts of his painting), flowers, and just nature in general. In consequence, working under the unity of nature, this probably allowed him to utilise his memory in an even more efficient way. If memory is dependent on connections to things already in long term memory, for someone who implicitly believes in the unity of everything, wouldn't that just be a natural by-product? No wonder, 'his curiosity was pure, personal and delightfully obsessive. '
Another wondrous thing he does, which most writers, directors must all possess to some degree is: 'But I also came to believe that his ability to blur the line between reality and fantasy... was a key to his creativity. Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo knew how to marry observation and imagination, which him history's consummate innovator. ' More formally introduced by Isaacson in his chapter on The Science of Art, he described Leonardo's trademark talent: 'the ability to convey, by marrying observation with imagination, "not only the works of nature but also infinite things that nature never created." Leonardo believed in basing knowledge on experience, but he also indulged his love of fantasy. He relished the wonders that can be seen by the eye but also those seen only by the imagination. As a result, his mind could dance magically, and sometimes frenetically, back and forth across the smudgy line that separates reality from fantasia. ' Like Einstein, he possessed this combinatory creativity. It's interesting that arguably two of history's greatest geniuses owed their success, their fervour to their ability to imagine new worlds in their minds, to use like lego blocks the phenomena in front of them and to transform it in some way. Paradoxically, it seems that imaginative activity for adults is seen as childlike, ineffectual, but the very act of imagination is employed by generals, directors and really in any piece of technology ever manufactured. Why do we have the proclivity to shed such an indispensable tool as we nestle into adulthood?
Born out of wedlock, Leonardo was 'mainly self-taught ', he takes pride in 'his lack of formal schooling led him to be a disciple of experience and experiment. ' Similar to other independent thinkers, 'his lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method more than a century later by Bacon and Galileo. His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the rest of us rarely pause to ponder after we've outgrown our wonder years. ' He eventually worked as an apprentice to Verrocchio, his first recorded piece of art was a shield with a 'dragon-like monster ' - the first indication of combining observation with imagination. As he observed nature, his favourite pattern was nature's spirals. He saw this both in the curls of angels but also in the flow of a river. Something that I was pleasantly surprised to find out was 'Leonardo was romantically and sexually attracted to men, and unlike Michelangelo, seemed to be just fine with that.' One man, Salai would be a recurring character throughout his life. It was interesting to view the stumbles he met when painting. For example, with the Adoration of the Magi, the task became too big, and he had to reduce the number of characters involved. His goal was 'making sure each one reacted emotionally to the others so that the painting would feel like a coherent narrative and not a random assortment of isolated characters. ' This he had to with thirty characters instead of the original sixty.
He eventually moved to Milan from Florence, which as 'an aspiring polymath ' in this bigger city allowed him to meet people from a greater variety of fields. In a memorable scene, Leonardo writes perhaps the greatest CV ever, highlighting his military engineering abilities despite never having 'been to a battle nor actually built any of the weapons he described '. Another way of Leonardo's thinking was using analogy: when he created a utopian city, he 'applied the classic analogy between the microcosm of the human body and the macrocosm of the earth. ' What houses all these ideas were 'his lifelong practice of keeping notebooks on a regular basis. ' Just as Mark Twain, Anais Nin, General Patton have done after him, the power of a notebook cannot be doubted. As Isaacson beautifully describes: 'But the joy of these juxtapositions as it wanders exuberantly in free-range fashion over the arts and sciences and, by doing so, senses the connections in our cosmos. We can extract from his pages, as he did from nature's, the patterns that underlie things that at first appear disconnected. ' Charlie Munger says a very similar thing, as does Shane Parrish at Farnam Street. This type of interconnected thinking seems to lead to more ingenuity and joy in learning. This makes sense for Leonardo, as he 'believed that analogy was a way to appreciate the unity of nature '.
Leonardo played several roles: military engineer, stage creator for plays, painter, architect, writer of novellas, amongst many others. He was also a vegetarian who arrived at that choice as he realised that 'unlike plants, animals could feel pain '. Other famous creations of Leonardo was the Vitruvian man which quoting Toby Lester considers it to embody 'a timeless human hope: that we just might have the power of mind to figure out how we fit into the grand scheme of things. ' I think art more than anything with its deficit of words could come closest to that approximation. One interesting affect of the Vitruvian man was that Isaacson talks about how in making it Leonardo talked to others, that he was very collaborative. He 'enjoyed being surrounded by friends, companions, students. ' This happily dispels the romantic notion that genius only appears if you stay settled in solitude long enough.
Again staying on the topic of his thinking, I will write some more quotes on how he saw the world:
'he was able to see patterns in nature, and he theorized by making analogies.'
'Because of his intuitive feel for the unity of nature, his mind and eye and pen darted across the disciplines, sensing connections.'
'But the patterns he discerned were more than just useful study guides. He regarded them as revelations of essential truths, manifestations of the beautiful unity of nature'.
The above were heightened by 'an omnivorous curiosity, which bordered on the fanatical and acute power of observation which was eerily intense. Like much with Leonardo these were interconnected. Any person who puts "Describe the tongue of the woodpecker" on his to-do list is overendowed with the combination of curiosity and acuity' .
How do you better observe scenes? Leonardo advises: 'look carefully and separately at each detail. He compared it to looking at the page of a book, which is meaningless when taken in as a whole and instead needs to be looked at word by word. Deep observation must be done in steps: "If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects ,begin with the details of them and do not go on to the second step until you have the first well fixed in memory. '
Examples of his own observations were bird watching, the pressure on the wings.
Some notable events in his life were: meeting Machiavelli, the king of France taking a liking to him, being turned off the horrors of war by being with Borgia who was ruthless (like Einstein and his former friend Fritz Haber). In a very distorted version of House MD, he went to hospitals to dissect the bodies
Perhaps more than any other individual, Leonardo is someone to emulate. Not for the desire to leave lasting artefacts in the world but principally the pure joy one must feel to create these wonders from your own mind, to see the unity of nature so closely, and to extend it in imagination. I will carefully consider adopting even a small amount of the thinking of Leonardo. The conclusion of the book is worth the price alone, where Isaacson distils some of the lessons we can apply to our own lives.
Three Lessons Learned:
1. Be relentlessly curious with what you read or study. Leonardo has shown that you can maximise that to a really intense degree. Critical thinking, Socratic questioning aids in this. And be a disciple of experience, as stringently independent as possible.
2. When you read a biography of Napoleon or of Mao, be aware of the unity of nature. This aids in long term memory, as you are categorising, you are chunking the material into a more meaningful pattern as Daniel Bor (The Ravenous Brain) would advise. Also, it's just a lot more enjoyable.
3. When you have read a new book or a part of history, use fantasia to imagine alternatives, to imagine Leonardo designing military equipment for the First Battle of the Marne. In short, have a much more active mind.
A single noun cannot pin down Leonardo. He cannot be cajoled into fixing in one enterprise, for a man who is the Renaissance man, boundaries seem non-existent by believing that 'the infinite works of nature, are woven together in a unity filled with marvelous patterns. ' What transcendence to perceive the world in that way! As he had 'a reverence for the wholeness of nature and feel for the harmony of its patterns ', it's such an interesting philosophy to build a foundation on. Imagine you subscribed to that: when you read the biographies of Napoleon or the court of Catherine the Great, in parallel you would see the physics that composes each of those figures, the architecture of their time, the different economic systems employed. That unity is the reality of the situation, no event is without threads which bundle together to make a complex scene arise. It is only in our biological shortcuts that we stereotype, categorise, and shut out complexity. By never losing sight of the 10,000 things, Leonardo became what he became. And I imagine his moment to moment experience was the much richer for it.
This led to him not just painting the Lady of Ermine, but but he also studied intently the fossils on mountains, the way water flowed, designing towns, optics (which were actually parts of his painting), flowers, and just nature in general. In consequence, working under the unity of nature, this probably allowed him to utilise his memory in an even more efficient way. If memory is dependent on connections to things already in long term memory, for someone who implicitly believes in the unity of everything, wouldn't that just be a natural by-product? No wonder, 'his curiosity was pure, personal and delightfully obsessive. '
Another wondrous thing he does, which most writers, directors must all possess to some degree is: 'But I also came to believe that his ability to blur the line between reality and fantasy... was a key to his creativity. Skill without imagination is barren. Leonardo knew how to marry observation and imagination, which him history's consummate innovator. ' More formally introduced by Isaacson in his chapter on The Science of Art, he described Leonardo's trademark talent: 'the ability to convey, by marrying observation with imagination, "not only the works of nature but also infinite things that nature never created." Leonardo believed in basing knowledge on experience, but he also indulged his love of fantasy. He relished the wonders that can be seen by the eye but also those seen only by the imagination. As a result, his mind could dance magically, and sometimes frenetically, back and forth across the smudgy line that separates reality from fantasia. ' Like Einstein, he possessed this combinatory creativity. It's interesting that arguably two of history's greatest geniuses owed their success, their fervour to their ability to imagine new worlds in their minds, to use like lego blocks the phenomena in front of them and to transform it in some way. Paradoxically, it seems that imaginative activity for adults is seen as childlike, ineffectual, but the very act of imagination is employed by generals, directors and really in any piece of technology ever manufactured. Why do we have the proclivity to shed such an indispensable tool as we nestle into adulthood?
Born out of wedlock, Leonardo was 'mainly self-taught ', he takes pride in 'his lack of formal schooling led him to be a disciple of experience and experiment. ' Similar to other independent thinkers, 'his lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method more than a century later by Bacon and Galileo. His method was rooted in experiment, curiosity, and the ability to marvel at phenomena that the rest of us rarely pause to ponder after we've outgrown our wonder years. ' He eventually worked as an apprentice to Verrocchio, his first recorded piece of art was a shield with a 'dragon-like monster ' - the first indication of combining observation with imagination. As he observed nature, his favourite pattern was nature's spirals. He saw this both in the curls of angels but also in the flow of a river. Something that I was pleasantly surprised to find out was 'Leonardo was romantically and sexually attracted to men, and unlike Michelangelo, seemed to be just fine with that.' One man, Salai would be a recurring character throughout his life. It was interesting to view the stumbles he met when painting. For example, with the Adoration of the Magi, the task became too big, and he had to reduce the number of characters involved. His goal was 'making sure each one reacted emotionally to the others so that the painting would feel like a coherent narrative and not a random assortment of isolated characters. ' This he had to with thirty characters instead of the original sixty.
He eventually moved to Milan from Florence, which as 'an aspiring polymath ' in this bigger city allowed him to meet people from a greater variety of fields. In a memorable scene, Leonardo writes perhaps the greatest CV ever, highlighting his military engineering abilities despite never having 'been to a battle nor actually built any of the weapons he described '. Another way of Leonardo's thinking was using analogy: when he created a utopian city, he 'applied the classic analogy between the microcosm of the human body and the macrocosm of the earth. ' What houses all these ideas were 'his lifelong practice of keeping notebooks on a regular basis. ' Just as Mark Twain, Anais Nin, General Patton have done after him, the power of a notebook cannot be doubted. As Isaacson beautifully describes: 'But the joy of these juxtapositions as it wanders exuberantly in free-range fashion over the arts and sciences and, by doing so, senses the connections in our cosmos. We can extract from his pages, as he did from nature's, the patterns that underlie things that at first appear disconnected. ' Charlie Munger says a very similar thing, as does Shane Parrish at Farnam Street. This type of interconnected thinking seems to lead to more ingenuity and joy in learning. This makes sense for Leonardo, as he 'believed that analogy was a way to appreciate the unity of nature '.
Leonardo played several roles: military engineer, stage creator for plays, painter, architect, writer of novellas, amongst many others. He was also a vegetarian who arrived at that choice as he realised that 'unlike plants, animals could feel pain '. Other famous creations of Leonardo was the Vitruvian man which quoting Toby Lester considers it to embody 'a timeless human hope: that we just might have the power of mind to figure out how we fit into the grand scheme of things. ' I think art more than anything with its deficit of words could come closest to that approximation. One interesting affect of the Vitruvian man was that Isaacson talks about how in making it Leonardo talked to others, that he was very collaborative. He 'enjoyed being surrounded by friends, companions, students. ' This happily dispels the romantic notion that genius only appears if you stay settled in solitude long enough.
Again staying on the topic of his thinking, I will write some more quotes on how he saw the world:
'he was able to see patterns in nature, and he theorized by making analogies.'
'Because of his intuitive feel for the unity of nature, his mind and eye and pen darted across the disciplines, sensing connections.'
'But the patterns he discerned were more than just useful study guides. He regarded them as revelations of essential truths, manifestations of the beautiful unity of nature'.
The above were heightened by 'an omnivorous curiosity, which bordered on the fanatical and acute power of observation which was eerily intense. Like much with Leonardo these were interconnected. Any person who puts "Describe the tongue of the woodpecker" on his to-do list is overendowed with the combination of curiosity and acuity' .
How do you better observe scenes? Leonardo advises: 'look carefully and separately at each detail. He compared it to looking at the page of a book, which is meaningless when taken in as a whole and instead needs to be looked at word by word. Deep observation must be done in steps: "If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects ,begin with the details of them and do not go on to the second step until you have the first well fixed in memory. '
Examples of his own observations were bird watching, the pressure on the wings.
Some notable events in his life were: meeting Machiavelli, the king of France taking a liking to him, being turned off the horrors of war by being with Borgia who was ruthless (like Einstein and his former friend Fritz Haber). In a very distorted version of House MD, he went to hospitals to dissect the bodies
Perhaps more than any other individual, Leonardo is someone to emulate. Not for the desire to leave lasting artefacts in the world but principally the pure joy one must feel to create these wonders from your own mind, to see the unity of nature so closely, and to extend it in imagination. I will carefully consider adopting even a small amount of the thinking of Leonardo. The conclusion of the book is worth the price alone, where Isaacson distils some of the lessons we can apply to our own lives.
Three Lessons Learned:
1. Be relentlessly curious with what you read or study. Leonardo has shown that you can maximise that to a really intense degree. Critical thinking, Socratic questioning aids in this. And be a disciple of experience, as stringently independent as possible.
2. When you read a biography of Napoleon or of Mao, be aware of the unity of nature. This aids in long term memory, as you are categorising, you are chunking the material into a more meaningful pattern as Daniel Bor (The Ravenous Brain) would advise. Also, it's just a lot more enjoyable.
3. When you have read a new book or a part of history, use fantasia to imagine alternatives, to imagine Leonardo designing military equipment for the First Battle of the Marne. In short, have a much more active mind.
This book is truly wonderful and thought-provoking. Walter Isaacson’s simple, yet descriptive, writing style, along with his obsession with details, beautifully manifest Leonardo’s curiosity, character, art, science, and sheer genius.
One cannot help but be in awe of this true Renaissance man after reading this book.
One cannot help but be in awe of this true Renaissance man after reading this book.