Leonardo

Just finished short, slightly eccentrical book about Leonardo with lots of colourful plates and some occasionally interesting facts and quotations.

I liked this one:

“The life of Leonardo is extremely varied and undetermined, so that it seems he lives only for the day” Piero da Novellara

and didn’t realise this was his

“The eyes is the window of the soul” – Leonardo

He did some of the first brain tomography too..

Leonardo later carried his examination of the ventricles of the brain (not human but bovine) still further by developing an ingenious sculptural technique consisting of injecting melted wax into an organ, allowing it to solidify and then removing it to reveal shape of that anatomical part.

But thought there were two huge missed opportunities for his genius.. didn’t anticipate Descartes and Newton on Optics, nor Harvey on circulation of blood. despite having tremendous knowledge of geometry, perspective and workings of human eyeball he didn’t develop a fully fledged theory of optics..

Despite his knowledge of mechanics and hydraulics, having designed numerous mechanical pumping devices, and disected many human and ox hearts, lungs and circulatory systems, and attempting to make working models of the hearts chambers, he missed the synthesis

About caspar

Caspar is just one monkey among billions. Battering his keyboard without expectations even of peanuts, let alone of aping the Immortal Bard. By day he is an infantologist at Birkbeck Babylab, by night he runs BabyLaughter.net
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