Leonardo da Vinci

Life and writing

Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519. Drawing was central to his investigation of the visible world: observations of bodies, movement and natural forms could become studies for art as well as records of inquiry. His surviving notes and drawings show a practice in which looking closely and asking how something works often belonged to the same activity.

The notebooks preserve working material rather than a single finished argument, including inquiries into different subjects. Thoughts on Art and Life arranges selected passages in a later English edition, translated by Maurice Baring and edited by Lewis Einstein. Reading each complete numbered selection with its section title helps distinguish reflections on knowledge from practical instructions or a historical scientific claim.

Reading this voice

Begin with a passage about knowledge or observation, then explore the Life, Art and Science sections of the same source edition. A memorable image is not evidence that a historical scientific claim is correct. The 1906 selection and translation postdate Leonardo’s life; its unit numbers belong to that edition. The archive’s approximate 1486 coordinate is his lifetime midpoint, not a date attached to the words.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.
• Before I proceed further I will make some experiments, because it is my intention to cite the experiment first and then to demonstrate by reasoning how such an experiment must necessarily take effect in such a manner. And this is the true rule by which investigations of natural phenomena must proceed; and although nature herself begins from the reason and ends in the result, we must pursue the contrary course and begin, as I said above, from experience and by it seek out the reason.
• In explaining the action of water remember to cite experience first and then reason.