6 ms·

One thing that struck me at an exhibit of Leonardo's notebooks is how totally wrong he was about so many things. It wasn't mentioned in the exhibit but for ever

One thing that struck me at an exhibit of Leonardo's notebooks is how totally wrong he was about so many things. It wasn't mentioned in the exhibit but for every one thing he was correct about, it seemed like there were many many, dozens perhaps, that he was completely incorrect about. Some of the ideas seem preposterous now, although it's difficult to view them appropriately as they would have been at the time. This could be seen positively or negatively. One way of spinning it is that he was persistent in exploring ideas. Another way, though, is that something -- mythmaking, hype, his art, whatever it is -- has allowed history to ignore the fact that he seemed to have been wrong more often than he was right, along the lines of a broken clock being right twice a day. In either case, I think there's something to be said for some kind of cultural and social context playing a strong role in how all of this is interpreted. A different person in the wrong place or wrong time might have been interpreted as a crackpot.

darkteflon 6y ago
You’re saying the issue is more nuanced than it appears at first blush, requiring careful consideration taking into account cultural context then and now?! That’s preposterous, give us your 140 character hot take instead. :)
psychomugs 6y ago
Of course he was wrong more often than he was right, he was a human being.
analog31 6y ago
I noticed the same thing in one of Aristotle's books, where he tries to catalog his encyclopedic knowledge of natural phenomena. It might just be a sign of an earlier intellectual era.
ColanR 6y ago
I was told by a doctor that in his 1980s biology class, the professor opened by saying, "half of what I'm going to teach you is wrong - we just don't know which half". I imagine it's similar with Leonardo, and likely with our own state-of-the-art knowledge. We are all broken clocks, and the trick is to figure out which part of our knowledge is wrong.
- anticsapp 6y ago
  They say that about advertising spend too. I think it was David Ogilvy but I'm too lazy to look it up.
  - onemoresoop 6y ago
    That is wishful thinking on their part IMO. Saying that half of X is wrong makes X look like half true. It could be false in a much higher proportion
    - anticsapp 6y ago
      That's a great point. Never occurred to me.
      - mercer 6y ago
        That's marketing!
  - m463 6y ago
    "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" - John Wanamaker
chongli 6y ago
Same goes for Isaac Newton. He’s practically been elevated to godhood for his contributions to calculus and physics. What about his occult studies, alchemy, and chronology [1]? It seems only historians (academic and amateur), Newton buffs, and compulsive Wikipedia clickers know or care about these weird ideas that were so important to Newton. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studie...
- tinalumfoil 6y ago
  10 successes and 1000 failures is more valuable than 1 success and no failures.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I don't think this sort of thing is rare, or a reflection of the time period he lived in or his status as an extreme outlier in historical influence. Many scientists spend a portion of their time in oddball or fruitless pursuits and sometimes it takes them over, particularly as they get older. Linus Pauling and Vitamin C is one thing that comes to mind. There was some scientist whose name I can't remember, was asked how he could be occupied by crazy ideas or obsessions and he said that these ideas came to him in exactly the same way as his deep scientific insights.
  - msandford 6y ago
    Suggesting that Linus Pauling was wrong about vitamin C is an interesting choice. In my opinion he's looking more and more prescient. https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-coronavirus-patients-with-vitamin-c/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-co... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ Just because someone looks silly to their contemporaries doesn't mean they're wrong. Look at Semmelweis. He figured out germs well before Pasteur. Doctors didn't accept it because they didn't like the implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis Sagan says it best. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-lessons-of-history-is-this-if https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-le...
kmill 6y ago
Is it apt comparing being right about things to a broken clock? Unlike a clock, there's no guarantee that anyone might eventually be right about anything. Sure, a monkey at a typewriter will eventually produce Shakespeare's complete works, but the chance is pretty much negligible.
aashiq 6y ago
Being right on average isn't that useful for intellectuals. Much harder to be right even once about something important that others are very wrong about. It's easy to be right on average by always following the prevailing consensus. People like Leonardo and Newton are valuable thinkers because they once in a while produce a really good idea, and it doesn't really matter if they know themselves which ideas are good or bad. This is a really bad trait for a leader or a trader though.
econcon 6y ago
He might not actually have discovered or invented everything on his own. What I most likely think, is that he was more like a Director of a government program or university who's tasked with key projects and allowed to interrogate or gather intelligence from anywhere. He most likely met a lot of people from both east and west, learned a few things them and decided to document them. Maybe those people also documented it in their own language somewhere but ofc it didn't survive the test of time and only way we know any of those things is through Leonardo's illustrations. The cities where he lived had influx of traders from all over the world. It's otherwise seemingly impossible for someone to come up with so many things during his lifetime.

darkteflon 6y ago

You’re saying the issue is more nuanced than it appears at first blush, requiring careful consideration taking into account cultural context then and now?! That’s preposterous, give us your 140 character hot take instead. :)

psychomugs 6y ago

Of course he was wrong more often than he was right, he was a human being.

analog31 6y ago

I noticed the same thing in one of Aristotle's books, where he tries to catalog his encyclopedic knowledge of natural phenomena. It might just be a sign of an earlier intellectual era.

ColanR 6y ago

I was told by a doctor that in his 1980s biology class, the professor opened by saying, "half of what I'm going to teach you is wrong - we just don't know which half". I imagine it's similar with Leonardo, and likely with our own state-of-the-art knowledge. We are all broken clocks, and the trick is to figure out which part of our knowledge is wrong.

anticsapp 6y ago
They say that about advertising spend too. I think it was David Ogilvy but I'm too lazy to look it up.
- onemoresoop 6y ago
  That is wishful thinking on their part IMO. Saying that half of X is wrong makes X look like half true. It could be false in a much higher proportion
  - anticsapp 6y ago
    That's a great point. Never occurred to me.
    - mercer 6y ago
      That's marketing!
- m463 6y ago
  "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" - John Wanamaker

chongli 6y ago

Same goes for Isaac Newton. He’s practically been elevated to godhood for his contributions to calculus and physics. What about his occult studies, alchemy, and chronology [1]? It seems only historians (academic and amateur), Newton buffs, and compulsive Wikipedia clickers know or care about these weird ideas that were so important to Newton. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studie...

tinalumfoil 6y ago
10 successes and 1000 failures is more valuable than 1 success and no failures.
perl4ever 6y ago
I don't think this sort of thing is rare, or a reflection of the time period he lived in or his status as an extreme outlier in historical influence. Many scientists spend a portion of their time in oddball or fruitless pursuits and sometimes it takes them over, particularly as they get older. Linus Pauling and Vitamin C is one thing that comes to mind. There was some scientist whose name I can't remember, was asked how he could be occupied by crazy ideas or obsessions and he said that these ideas came to him in exactly the same way as his deep scientific insights.
- msandford 6y ago
  Suggesting that Linus Pauling was wrong about vitamin C is an interesting choice. In my opinion he's looking more and more prescient. https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-coronavirus-patients-with-vitamin-c/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-co... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/ Just because someone looks silly to their contemporaries doesn't mean they're wrong. Look at Semmelweis. He figured out germs well before Pasteur. Doctors didn't accept it because they didn't like the implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis Sagan says it best. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-lessons-of-history-is-this-if https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-le...

kmill 6y ago

Is it apt comparing being right about things to a broken clock? Unlike a clock, there's no guarantee that anyone might eventually be right about anything. Sure, a monkey at a typewriter will eventually produce Shakespeare's complete works, but the chance is pretty much negligible.

aashiq 6y ago

Being right on average isn't that useful for intellectuals. Much harder to be right even once about something important that others are very wrong about. It's easy to be right on average by always following the prevailing consensus. People like Leonardo and Newton are valuable thinkers because they once in a while produce a really good idea, and it doesn't really matter if they know themselves which ideas are good or bad. This is a really bad trait for a leader or a trader though.

econcon 6y ago

He might not actually have discovered or invented everything on his own. What I most likely think, is that he was more like a Director of a government program or university who's tasked with key projects and allowed to interrogate or gather intelligence from anywhere. He most likely met a lot of people from both east and west, learned a few things them and decided to document them. Maybe those people also documented it in their own language somewhere but ofc it didn't survive the test of time and only way we know any of those things is through Leonardo's illustrations. The cities where he lived had influx of traders from all over the world. It's otherwise seemingly impossible for someone to come up with so many things during his lifetime.