Case da Vinci

(10 Oct 2020)

I continued reading Water Isaacson’s books and enjoyed his latest book on Leonardo da Vinci. It is a biography and a bit heavy to read, but the life of da Vinci is extraordinary. It seems that Leonardo did combine two talents early in his life: arts and technology. He was trained in painting, but had skills in creating mechanical devices (casting metal and so on).  Based on the biography, it seems like the factors that made him successful were combining art and engineering, exchanging ideas with people from all walks of life, persistent interest on a wide variety of things, obsessive need to figure out certain things and hard work. Curiously however, for example his math was pretty poor. He was very productive and wrote thousands of pages of produced thousands of pages of texts and drawings. Later studies have shown that most of these machines would not be applicable at all. As we know, he did, however, produce many innovations, scientific leaps and he was considered one of the most talented (or The most talented) painter of his time. Anyway, such productivity and creativity, even if it does not always lead to genuine progress perhaps led to progress in the long term.