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> Great people are not necessarily nice people. I understand that Leonardo Da Vinci was a jerk. I don't understand the deification of Leonardo da Vinci either.

by jules 15y ago

> Great people are not necessarily nice people. I understand that Leonardo Da Vinci was a jerk. I don't understand the deification of Leonardo da Vinci either. He was a nice painter but nothing extraordinary. His science and engineering is basically bogus, like his flying machines. Now Newton and Gauss for example, they were true geniuses. But when historians see a drawing of a flying machine by da Vince they think "amazing!" and so does the general public. When they come across Newton's works the see a bunch of unintelligible stuff.

joubert 15y ago
I think you underestimate the vastness of Da Vinci's contributions. Have you seen any of his paintings in real life? I saw an amazing Da Vinci exhibit in South Africa more than a decade ago. It included not only some of his paintings, but also an incredible array of sketches in fields where he made important discoveries such as anatomy, optics, civil engineering, etc. For me, when you see the depth of his work across a wide swathe of fields, he stands out as a beacon amongst a fog of misery and ignorance.
- jules 15y ago
  I have seen some of da Vinci's paintings in real life. Among them his famous Mona Lisa. I didn't find them particularly extraordinary among the other paintings in the Louvre, though I already said that he was a good painter. What are his important discoveries in anatomy, optics and civil engineering? What did da Vinci discover about optics that Euclid hadn't already discovered 1700 years earlier? It seems to me that his contribution in those fields is mainly as an illustrator. Which of his "inventions" actually worked? How do you explain his nonsense engineering like flying machines? Perhaps the case that da Vinci was an illustrator-wannabe-scientist/engineer is overstating it a bit. I'm not saying he made no contributions whatsoever, just that there are other people far more deserving of the deification that Leonardo da Vinci enjoys, like Newton, Galilei, Gauss, etc. When people talk about da Vinci's contributions they always talk in vague terms. Now take Newton and we can easily find numerous contributions that are still extremely important even in our age: * Calculus - the basis of physics, engineering, and a large part of practical mathematics * Newton's laws of motion * Newton's law of gravity * Major contributions to optics * Newton's method - one of the most important algorithms The trouble with these is that they require far more effort and study to appreciate compared to a bunch of drawings, especially if you don't try to look critically at the drawings and try to determine whether the machines depicted actually work.
  - commieneko 15y ago
    The reason that I compared Jobs to Da Vinci is that both were visionaries that changed the way the world looked at things. Don't just compare the visuals of Da Vinci's paintings with their museum neighbors. Compare the dates as well. Da Vinci changed how artists, engineers, architects, and scientists organized visual information. If his works seem ordinary that's because his methods and systems have been internalized into our culture. People watch building size vehicles fly over their heads and talk to people instantaneously and globally over computer networks, and think nothing of it. Commonplace. Ordinary. So what's the big stink with Newton? I mean, we have much better mathematicians and scientists now? By modern standards Newton is incomplete and imprecise. <-- Note sarcasm. Try looking at some medieval European paintings or icons. Beautiful, to be sure, but try and imagine trying to visualize and present complex models at that level. I'm guessing you can't; probably you are having a hard time understanding just what the hell I'm talking about. I mean, he just made pictures, right? That's how powerful Da Vinci's works are. (Note: Don't confuse what I'm talking about with linear perspective, developed in the west by Brunelleschi, a contemporary of Da Vinci. Linear perspective is vitally important to this, and Da Vinci made good use of it. Visually, better than anyone else at the time.) And, back to his paintings for just a second. My degree is in Fine Arts. Back in the '70s if you wanted to do computer image synthesis, there was barely any hardware and no commercial software for such. We had to write our own software. My personal curriculum caused my advisor nightmares. But I did do my share of oil painting. I copied several great masters, to try and get into their heads a bit. It's one thing to glance at the surface of a work in the museum and make a quick judgement. It's quite another to try and recreate something like that. Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine) was one project. I still have nightmares about it. I spent six months on it and never got anywhere close. And it's considered a lessor work.
    - jules 15y ago
      So you're basically claiming that what he added to science, maths and engineering was that he was a revolutionary illustrator? I would probably believe that, if it was accompanied by some evidence. Even this claim you describe in extremely vague terms, as always with da Vinci. What exactly did he do different than his predecessors? What were his great accomplishments exactly, that put him in the same category as Newton and Gauss, or even higher than them? > So what's the big stink with Newton? I mean, we have much better mathematicians and scientists now? By modern standards Newton is incomplete and imprecise. <-- Note sarcasm. Even though you mark this as sarcasm, I'd like to address this. Of course modern mathematicians and scientists do better in absolute terms. What Newton did is now common knowledge. What makes Newton so great is not his absolute level, but the things he added to science. The delta between scientific and mathematical knowledge before Newton and after Newton is huge. So what is da Vinci's delta? In concrete terms; not just a logical fallacy like "you don't know what da Vinci's contributions are, so they are so entrenched in society that they must be great!". > (Note: Don't confuse what I'm talking about with linear perspective, developed in the west by Brunelleschi, a contemporary of Da Vinci. Linear perspective is vitally important to this, and Da Vinci made good use of it. Visually, better than anyone else at the time.) Interestingly, perspective was already understood by Euclid in 300BC and described in his work on optics. Alas, like the Greeks' knowledge that the earth is a sphere (heck they even measured the diameter), this was largely forgotten and didn't become mainstream artistic knowledge until much later. > Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine) was one project. I still have nightmares about it. I spent six months on it and never got anywhere close. And it's considered a lessor work. I'm sorry if this comes of as rude, but that's hardly proof that da Vinci was an extraordinarily good painter. Still, I have no problem conceding this point the third time. When I look at da Vinci's paintings I see nothing particularly worthy of deification above all other painters (on the contrary), but then I don't have a degree in Fine Arts so I accept that people who are experts on the matter have it right and my tastes have it wrong. The problem is that he is in general deified for being an all-round genius, not just a painter.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
philwelch 15y ago
Leonardo did a lot more practical engineering than just making fanciful drawing of flying machines, and his anatomical drawings, for one, were remarkable.

by jules 15y ago

joubert 15y ago

I think you underestimate the vastness of Da Vinci's contributions. Have you seen any of his paintings in real life? I saw an amazing Da Vinci exhibit in South Africa more than a decade ago. It included not only some of his paintings, but also an incredible array of sketches in fields where he made important discoveries such as anatomy, optics, civil engineering, etc. For me, when you see the depth of his work across a wide swathe of fields, he stands out as a beacon amongst a fog of misery and ignorance.

jules 15y ago
I have seen some of da Vinci's paintings in real life. Among them his famous Mona Lisa. I didn't find them particularly extraordinary among the other paintings in the Louvre, though I already said that he was a good painter. What are his important discoveries in anatomy, optics and civil engineering? What did da Vinci discover about optics that Euclid hadn't already discovered 1700 years earlier? It seems to me that his contribution in those fields is mainly as an illustrator. Which of his "inventions" actually worked? How do you explain his nonsense engineering like flying machines? Perhaps the case that da Vinci was an illustrator-wannabe-scientist/engineer is overstating it a bit. I'm not saying he made no contributions whatsoever, just that there are other people far more deserving of the deification that Leonardo da Vinci enjoys, like Newton, Galilei, Gauss, etc. When people talk about da Vinci's contributions they always talk in vague terms. Now take Newton and we can easily find numerous contributions that are still extremely important even in our age: * Calculus - the basis of physics, engineering, and a large part of practical mathematics * Newton's laws of motion * Newton's law of gravity * Major contributions to optics * Newton's method - one of the most important algorithms The trouble with these is that they require far more effort and study to appreciate compared to a bunch of drawings, especially if you don't try to look critically at the drawings and try to determine whether the machines depicted actually work.
- commieneko 15y ago
  The reason that I compared Jobs to Da Vinci is that both were visionaries that changed the way the world looked at things. Don't just compare the visuals of Da Vinci's paintings with their museum neighbors. Compare the dates as well. Da Vinci changed how artists, engineers, architects, and scientists organized visual information. If his works seem ordinary that's because his methods and systems have been internalized into our culture. People watch building size vehicles fly over their heads and talk to people instantaneously and globally over computer networks, and think nothing of it. Commonplace. Ordinary. So what's the big stink with Newton? I mean, we have much better mathematicians and scientists now? By modern standards Newton is incomplete and imprecise. <-- Note sarcasm. Try looking at some medieval European paintings or icons. Beautiful, to be sure, but try and imagine trying to visualize and present complex models at that level. I'm guessing you can't; probably you are having a hard time understanding just what the hell I'm talking about. I mean, he just made pictures, right? That's how powerful Da Vinci's works are. (Note: Don't confuse what I'm talking about with linear perspective, developed in the west by Brunelleschi, a contemporary of Da Vinci. Linear perspective is vitally important to this, and Da Vinci made good use of it. Visually, better than anyone else at the time.) And, back to his paintings for just a second. My degree is in Fine Arts. Back in the '70s if you wanted to do computer image synthesis, there was barely any hardware and no commercial software for such. We had to write our own software. My personal curriculum caused my advisor nightmares. But I did do my share of oil painting. I copied several great masters, to try and get into their heads a bit. It's one thing to glance at the surface of a work in the museum and make a quick judgement. It's quite another to try and recreate something like that. Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine) was one project. I still have nightmares about it. I spent six months on it and never got anywhere close. And it's considered a lessor work.
  - jules 15y ago
    So you're basically claiming that what he added to science, maths and engineering was that he was a revolutionary illustrator? I would probably believe that, if it was accompanied by some evidence. Even this claim you describe in extremely vague terms, as always with da Vinci. What exactly did he do different than his predecessors? What were his great accomplishments exactly, that put him in the same category as Newton and Gauss, or even higher than them? > So what's the big stink with Newton? I mean, we have much better mathematicians and scientists now? By modern standards Newton is incomplete and imprecise. <-- Note sarcasm. Even though you mark this as sarcasm, I'd like to address this. Of course modern mathematicians and scientists do better in absolute terms. What Newton did is now common knowledge. What makes Newton so great is not his absolute level, but the things he added to science. The delta between scientific and mathematical knowledge before Newton and after Newton is huge. So what is da Vinci's delta? In concrete terms; not just a logical fallacy like "you don't know what da Vinci's contributions are, so they are so entrenched in society that they must be great!". > (Note: Don't confuse what I'm talking about with linear perspective, developed in the west by Brunelleschi, a contemporary of Da Vinci. Linear perspective is vitally important to this, and Da Vinci made good use of it. Visually, better than anyone else at the time.) Interestingly, perspective was already understood by Euclid in 300BC and described in his work on optics. Alas, like the Greeks' knowledge that the earth is a sphere (heck they even measured the diameter), this was largely forgotten and didn't become mainstream artistic knowledge until much later. > Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_an_Ermine) was one project. I still have nightmares about it. I spent six months on it and never got anywhere close. And it's considered a lessor work. I'm sorry if this comes of as rude, but that's hardly proof that da Vinci was an extraordinarily good painter. Still, I have no problem conceding this point the third time. When I look at da Vinci's paintings I see nothing particularly worthy of deification above all other painters (on the contrary), but then I don't have a degree in Fine Arts so I accept that people who are experts on the matter have it right and my tastes have it wrong. The problem is that he is in general deified for being an all-round genius, not just a painter.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

philwelch 15y ago

Leonardo did a lot more practical engineering than just making fanciful drawing of flying machines, and his anatomical drawings, for one, were remarkable.