INTRODUCTION

LEONARDO’S GENIUS

Some 7,200 pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks are with us today. Imagine, 500 years after his death, we still have his writings—but not all of them. Leonardo’s biographers believe that in his lifetime he may have filled between 20,000 and 28,000 pages with writings and detailed drawings about anatomy, botany, philosophy, physiology, engineering, architecture, zoology, painting, geometry, geography, and more. Somewhere they went missing. We’ve lost so many of his ideas and studies, questions and answers, but from the 7,200 pages we have, we’re able to see how Leonardo worked, and that is where we are lucky.

Leonardo (1452–1519) is recognized as one of the great geniuses of the Renaissance period in Europe, which stretched from the 1300s to the 1600s. But he’s also recognized as one of the greatest geniuses of all time. His notebooks explain why. Leonardo’s works of art—which include the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa—are only part of his gift to us. His paintings inspire, but the information he left behind on how he created is an even greater gift. Leonardo’s genius was his thinking process, and that is something we can learn from and apply to our own learning.

The Italian countryside outside of Milan in northern Italy. Leonardo began keeping his now-famous notebooks around the time he moved to Milan in 1482. He was 30 years old, a lifelong student of nature, and he made lists of everything he learned about and wanted to know.

What’s important is that Leonardo did not think of art as separate from science or science as separate from engineering. His investigations as scientist and engineer strengthened his art because he understood anatomy, physics, nature, and geometry. His sketches of machines and technological inventions are beautiful—with as much attention paid to light, shadow, and fine detail as any preparatory sketches for his paintings.

One topic of study for Leonardo informed the next, and in his notebooks they are all crammed together—drawings of human anatomy are on the same page as sketches for watermills and notes about engineering projects. Paper was expensive in Leonardo’s day, and he did not waste it—he filled those pages. He kept a notebook in his belt so that he could pull it out and make notes whenever an idea occurred to him. That’s important.

Leonardo worked on his most famous painting, La Gioconda, known as Mona Lisa, from about 1503 to 1506. In most of his portraits and other paintings, Leonardo included details of scientifically accurate bodies of water, rocks, trees, and clouds.

Much has been said about Leonardo’s famous “mirror writing.” He was left handed and found it easiest to write from right to left—so most people must hold a page up to a mirror to read it. That tells us something interesting about how he did things “his way.” But it’s his boundless curiosity, his pleasure in figuring out how things work, his pursuit of ideas and unravelling the mysteries of nature and science for his own pleasure that make him a genius. He never stopped asking questions such as, “Why is the sky blue?” He never stopped looking for answers—and writing down his thoughts in his notebooks as he went along.

At the bottom of this page from one of Leonardo’s notebooks, you can see an example of his mirror writing, describing take off and landing gear for a flying machine. Try mirror writing some time.

And there is something else. Leonardo was never afraid to point out in his notes where he had been mistaken. That’s important, too. Study, learn, make mistakes, recognize the mistakes, grow from them, and keep learning!

In a school based on Leonardo’s style of learning, all subjects would come together in one space for us to experience how each influences the rest. We would learn science alongside math, math alongside music, music alongside technology, and so on. Today’s blend of STEAM—science, technology, engineering, art and design, and math—is very much the way that Leonardo learned about the world in which he lived.

The next time you work on a project, remember that how you work and what you do are as important as the final product. The steps you take and the heart and imagination you put into a project are what make the final thing a success.

The scientific method lets you plan, test, and examine the results of your experiments.

The concept of a scientific method didn’t exist when Leonardo was at work, but he was aware of the necessity to test ideas many times in different circumstances to make sure they really worked. “Before you make a general rule,” he wrote, “test it two or three times and observe whether the tests produce the same effects.”

Some projects in this book will ask you to apply the scientific method, just as scientists do in the world today. Here are the steps you will take:

Next, define the parts of the experiment that will not change. These are called controls. Controls remain constant. One of the control elements for the river experiment might be that you are testing at exactly the same time every day.

For your experiments in this book and beyond, here is a chart to guide your use of the scientific method. Photocopy it or write the steps in your own notebook.

The questions you ask and the process you take to find the answers will lead you to experience, as Leonardo did, that no matter whether your pursuit is in science, technology, engineering, art and design, or math—everything is connected.

Keep a science notebook—you’ll be needing it as we proceed through these chapters. Choose any kind you like: spiral-bound, three-ring binder, pocket-size notepad—whatever works for you. We’ll apply the scientific method, beginning with air and flight.