The Science of Leonardo - Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance

Zusatztext “Minutely researched! vividly written! and endlessly fascinating! The Science of Leonardo opens up a realm which has never been adequately appreciated.” —Dr. Oliver Sacks“Illuminating and impassioned . . . . A profound and clear exploration of Leonardo's scientific thought.”— The San Francisco Chronicle “A delight . . . . Lucid and spirited! it sparks a whole series of ideas and questions for further investigation.”— American Scientist “A fascinating glimpse of the road not taken by Western Science. Capra makes a compelling case that the science of the future may look a lot more like Leonardo's than Bacon's or Descartes -- a science of systems! non-reductive and akin to an art.” —Michael Pollan! author of Botany of Desire and Omnivore's Dilemma “Vivid and compelling. . . . Leonardo himself would have nodded in approval of this book! because for the first time it crystallizes the entire body of his work into a coherent! unified whole.” —Michio Kaku! author of Physics of the Impossible Informationen zum Autor Fritjof Capra Klappentext Leonardo da Vinci's pioneering scientific work was virtually unknown during his lifetime. Acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Capra reveals that da Vinci was in many ways the unacknowledged "father of modern science." One Infinite Grace The earliest literary portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, and to me still the most moving, is that by the Tuscan painter and architect Giorgio Vasari in his classic book Lives of the Artists , published in 1550. (1) Vasari was only eight years old when Leonardo died, but he gathered information about the master from many artists who had known him and remembered him well, most notably Leonardo’s close friend and disciple Francesco Melzi. An acquaintance of Leonardo, the surgeon and art collector Paolo Giovio, wrote a short eulogy, but it is unfinished and merely a page long. (2) Vasari’s chapter, “Life of Leonardo da Vinci,” therefore, is as close as we can come to a contemporary account. Besides being an accomplished painter and architect, Vasari was a keen collector of drawings by famous masters and of stories about them. The idea of writing a book on the history of Italian art from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries was suggested to him by Giovio during a dinner party in Rome. (3) The book became a bestseller when it was first published, and its wide popular appeal has endured over the centuries due to the author’s lively and colorful portraits, replete with charming anecdotes. Through a series of engaging stories about the lives of its greatest artists, Vasari’s Lives conveyed the revolutionary nature of the Italian Renaissance. In spite of many inaccuracies and a tendency toward referring to legends and idolizing, Vasari’s work remains the principal source for anyone interested in that period of European art and culture. QUALITIES AND APPEARANCE The opening paragraphs of Vasari’s chapter on Leonardo are an emphatic declaration of the master’s exceptional qualities and appearance: In the normal course of events many men and women are born with various remarkable qualities and talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvelously endowed by heaven with beauty, grace, and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired, and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human art. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease. He possessed great strength and dexterity; he was a man of regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind; and his name became so famous that no...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Fritjof Capra
• Editore: Anchor Books USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 02.12.2008
• EAN: 9781400078837
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-7883-7
• Pagine: 352
• Dimensioni: 158 mm x 235 mm x 20 mm
• Serie: ANCHOR; The Anchor
• Categoria: Scienze naturali, medicina, informatica, tecnica > Scienze naturali, tematiche generali