leonardo da vinci

People point out that Leonardo Da Vinci was about experience, and not just "a man of letters."  What they mean by "not a man of letters" is that he wasn't formally educated. Leonardo himself says this many times(see Walter Isaacson's "Leonardo Da Vinci" which is the book I draw from for much of this.  I read his Einstein like a decade ago or so, and so, when I saw that he wrote about Leonardo Da Vinci, I had to read that book.  There's many books out lately about Leonardo; but, I knew Walter Isaacson; so, I knew this had to be the one of the better books to read about Leonardo Da Vinci)

When people think of the Renaissance, they think of Greek science and philosophy rediscovered. And, that's correct. But, the point here is that Leonardo, being "the" Renaissance figure, was actually not formally educated, was self taught, and preached a hundred years before Galileo to learn on your own, to go the source, the data.

Leonardo Da Vinci lived during the time of the discoveries of the Americas.  In fact, he knew and was friends with AmerigoVespucci.  Another famous character he knew and seemed to be on good terms with is Machiavelli.

Another major scientific/technological event during Leonardo's life was the Gutenberg printing press.  He learned of Euclid's Elements amongst so much else in his later years when the printing press made these things much more available. Leonardo was also born poor, and out in a country farmland, not some inner city.

"I am fully aware that my not being a man of letters may cause certain presumptuous people to think that they  may with reason  blame me, alleging that I am a man without learning. Foolish folk! . . . They strut about puffed up and pompous, decked out and adorned not with their own labors, but by those of others . . . . They will say that because I have no book learning I cannot properly express what I describe- but they do not know that my subjects require experience rather than the words of others." - Leonardo Da Vinci

But, the printing press actually allowed him to read books that he wanted to read and not what others wanted to him to read.  The printing press era later allowed him to read some of that standard stuff.  The important point perhaps here is that Leonardo learned not to be dogma or follow dogma.

Leonardo describes an early discovery and adventure of his childhood. "Bending back and forth, I tried to see whether I could discovery anything inside, but the darkness within prevented that. Suddenly there arose in me two contrary emotions, fear and desire- fear of the threatening dark cave, desire to see whether there was any marvelous thing within."  Leonardo then describes that he found fossils.

Leonardo studied anatomy and geology to make better paintings.  He painted both for fun and profit. But, he was also into making all kinds of mechanisms for the elaborate plays of the day.

He drew birds and studied them to learn how to make manned flight. He tried to conceive of a perpetual motion machine.  To his credit he figured out that such a machine was impossible for friction reasons. Leonardo appears to be the first to understand this - not Galileo.

He not only studied perspective geometry to make his paintings more realistic, but he studied human emotions to make emotional paintings and sculpture.

Leonardo may have been influenced by Roger Bacon.  Leonardo drew submarines, water powered cannon's, stealth black ships. . . . Leonardo observed that the sum of the branches equals the trunk of a fractal . . .  the vitruveus man is obviously inspired by a Vitruvius to picture the proportions of mankind . . .

Birds inspired Leonardo Da Vinci to think of human flight. He noticed Bernouli's principle intuitively.

Leonardo came up with the spiral metal arm to keep clocks ticking at a consistent rate. This was one of the mechanical things James Burke shows.

James Burke points out the history of clocks in episode/chapter 5 of his Connections. He mentions a sundial, and a water clock, and how these technologies have limitations of cloudy day, water freezing. James then points out a verge and foliat system

It's a gearing system that goes tick/tock.  There's a weight, and a gearing system that engages to slow the weight down. This is brilliant, but large and unweildy.  Leonardo Da Vinci came up with his spiral gear system that led to what's called the Nuremberg Egg,

As James Burke exclaims, these Nuremberg Eggs were the high technology of the day.

Machines use energy to do things. Leonardo analysed the Human body as a machine and determined how much weight each muscle can lift.  He did this analyses to design a flying machine.  But, he then went on to make such an analyses for many machines - saw mills,  wool-cleaning machines, paper mills, hammers for forgers, flour mills, knife grinding, burnishing arms, manufacture of gunpowder, silk spinners, ribbon weaving, shaping vases.

Leonardos study of machines led to try to make a perpetual motion machine. He intuitively figured out friction saps the energy - Perpetual motion is impossible  This led to Galileo noting that motion continues in a vacuum, but not where  there's friction.

In designing machines to study friction, he created machines that wouldn't be built till the 1800s - a Tribometer and ball bearings.  Leonardo seems to be the first to record a mix of metals that would reduce friction.  These anti-friction alloys wouldn't be rediscovered till 1839 by a Isaac Babbitt.

Another curious contemporary of Leonardo was Michelangelo.  The contrast of characters is striking. Leonardo is the Albert Einstein curiosity character. He did not believe in superstitions, alchemy and astrology.  He sought cause and affect.  Michelangelo was haunted by inner mystic demons.

Michelangelo, as Vasari reported, displayed "a very great disdain" toward Leonardo."  Walter Isaacson further mentions a story of Leonardo walking with friends in Florence.  They were talking about a Dante passage, when Michelangelo walked by and snickered that Leonardo ordered a hugh bronze horse to be made, but did not finish it. Michelangelo is quotes as saying "My delight is in melancholy."

My favorite Leonardo Da Vinci inventions are his musical instruments. Like the way the nineteen eighties used synthesizers to do on one instrument what was normally done on another - for instance a hand held keyboard used as a guitar, or a keyboard synthesizer to play guitar, drums, you name it, Leonardo mixed and matched different instruments to get different capabilities. He mixed a lyre  and  fiddle. It had seven strings - five were meant to be played with a bow, and two were to be plucked.  This instrument was pictured by Raphael after Leonardo's life. Lira da braccio

"Leonardo knew how to play the lyre "with rare distinction" according to the Anonimo" - Walter Isaacson.  Leonardo played music from Petrarch, and his own compositions. A Paolo Giovio mentions "He was a connoisseur and marvelous inventor of all beautiful things, especially in the field of stage performances, and sang masterfully to his own accompaniment on the lyre."

Leonardo turned a bell into a keyboard.  He had two hammers striking at different places of the bell, and four dampers to strike it differently

He created drums with different tensions to create different sounds.  He created drums with holes to be played like a flute. He even created a kind of drum keyboard.

Then, there was the viola organista, a cross between a violin and an organ. He created a looped bow that allowed the sound to be sustained unlike a regular violin.

Leonardo Da Vinci's mathematics was mostly drawing illustrations for Luca Pacioli's "On the Divine Proportion."  Geometric proportion was Leonardo's main interest in mathematics.  He tried to think of squaring the circle in terms of proportions.

The above is Leonardo Da Vinci's almost topological effort to square the circle.

Leonardo duplicated the cube, one of the three Greek classical delian problems not solved by them by a three dimensional version of the Pythagorean theorem,

Recently, it has come to light that Leonardo thought of a mechanical calculator.  But, there's no indication he ever actually built it.

- I can't help finishing this writeup of Leonardo Da Vinci by noting that he seems to have influenced a Gerolamo Cardano.  Leonardo Da Vinci was good friends with a Fazio Cardano.

Most people today have seen the quadratic formula. If you can either memorize the quadratic formula, or, if you know how to derive it, you can solve any second degree equation just by plugging in values.  The Greeks solved this geometrically. Through a long evolution of mathematics going from one culture to another, this became symbolized algebraically.  Archimedes did solve a special case of the third degree equation - by intersection of conics.  But, in one of the most Renaissance like stories, the third degree equation was finally solved as a closed form solution like the quadratic formula. Cardano got the formula from a Tartaglia.  But, Cardano figured he got it from someone else.  He eventually found the true discoverer of the general third degree formula - Scipione del Ferro

Cardano had a Ferrari colleague.  This Ferrari solved the general fourth degree equation.  I've done the general third degree, but have only taken stabs at the general fourth. Well, Gerolamo did invent complex numbers and used them effectively with solutions to the general third degree equation.  Gerolamo also was the first to introduce the binomial formula.  He did probability theory from his gambling days.  But, it's his mechanical inventions(and that he's the son of a former friend of Leonardo) that makes me want to point out Gerolamo Cardano here.

Gerolamo invented a gyroscope, a combination lock, shaft with universal joints which allows transmission of forces at different angles; this is still used in vehicles today.  And, he used hypocycloids to make for faster printing presses. 

astro picture for the day/ Terrence Deacon's "The Symbolic Species"

Image Credit: VIMS Team, U. Arizona, U. Nantes, ESA, NASA - These are pictures stitched together over a period of years of Titan. Titan is a moon of Saturn.  It's atmosphere prevented us from seeing its surface.  We sent a space probe all the way out there, and got enough data to put these pictures together!


"Though the analysis of brain organization and function in modern species can tell us a great deal about the human/non-human difference with respect to language, it leaves open questions concerning the evolutionary transition from nonlanguage to language communication." - Terrence W. Deacon, in his "The Symbolic Species."

Terrence Deacon's main finding about human language is that kids learn how to speak without learning the grammar and rules of language.  Human language seems to be quite different from the language of other animals.  But, human language must evolve from non-Human language. As the quote above indicates, he does not know of or offer exactly how this Human language could have evolved out of non-Human language. 

Terrence mentions many things like brain/body ratios. He suggests that life body plans are different based on size, and likewise, the brain and nervous system evolves differently based on the body itself. Well, maybe.

Terrence suggests many times that language must be based on some Mnemonic like affects. He says "how else can we spit out such a large vocabulary all in some grammar harmony?"(that's a paraphrase). 

What's interesting to me about his Mnemonic language suggestion is that he argues against talking about mathematics.  He says that stuff comes later. Also, the Mnemonic basis for human language is similar to the "Metaphors we live by" by George Lakoff.

The Metaphors we live by book suggests that the words we use is often based on some central metaphor. George Lakoff gives an example of argument is war,

"ARGUMENT IS WAR  -

Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target. I demolished his argument. I've never won an argument with him. You disagree? Okay, shoot! If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. He shot down all of my arguments."

Keeping my posts short and to the point, as usual, Terrence touches on the idea of there being some kind of mnemonic at the core of human language, which would allow Humans to pick out the right word out of tens of thousands of words vocabulary. And, the one example I quote above from George Lakoff's "Metaphors we live by" would further suggest a kind of Mnemonic nature to human language. This idea further relates to Jacob Bronowski's "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination."

Terrence mostly talks about language studies with Chimpanzees.  And, there's some good stuff there. For instance, there was a Kanzi.  Researchers were trying to teach Kanzi's mother language; but, she never quite picked it up.  But Kanzi, who was just hanging around while they were working with his mother picked up on  language!  This reminds me of the feral children I posted before. Only, this is a little bit in reverse. Instead of a human becoming say chimpanzee, the chimpanzee becomes human just by being raised in a human environment.

Anyways, Jacob Bronowski is coming from learning about the nature of all knowledge - poetry, mathematics, science, and seeing the analogies. Terrence doesn't see this, and suggests there is no way to understand how Human language can evolve from non-Human language - which it must have.

As Jacob says in chapter two, mankind could generalize and specialize to decode words out of the instruction language that life started out with. For instance, there can be hawk danger in the air, and leopard danger on the ground. Non-Human language often has separate noises for danger in each case.  But, humans have generalised and abstracted away the concept of danger from the concrete particulars.

I'd like to further note that for any living thing to survive in the world, it must have some kind of understanding of the outside world. It must no when, for instance a food is a poison or not. But, most life is adapted to a particular environment.  It doesn't stray from the ecosystems life-cycle. You won't see a polar bear decide to go live in the Sahara desert for the summer for instance. Homo Erectus, we know for sure, was the first Human species, anyways, that was general, that could live in different environments and survive.

- Terrence for the most part finishes up with suggesting that Homo Habilis at least could have relied on marriage as a symbolic solution to a biological problem.  Before then, as far as mankind has been able to find, no life had made a symbolic solution to a problem. It was always a biological adaptation that locked us into some ecological niche.

He points out that Human male/female relationships is unique in the natural world.  The rest of the natural world doesn't have wife/husband relationships. 

He suggests that meat eating presented a problem. This meat economy is like the Knight/Horse economy in the second half of the dark ages. Like the way the whole social hierarchy of surfs and lords and Kings were organised around the raising horses and the metallurgy to make the Knights armor, the evolution from vegetation to eating meat presented a problem between the males and the females.  I'm keeping his whole argument short.  But, he's saying that Homo Habilis, at least, must have invented, ritually, marriage for the females and the males to make sure that everyone knew that when the male hunts and brings back the meat, that hunters wife will get fed.

Well, maybe - But, I can't help noting a more contemporary example.  Terrence notes a peace festival in the South Americas. The Yanomamo indians of Venezuela and northern Brazil would have a peace festival.  They allow a warring faction to come to their festival.  If the other tribe doesn't kill anyone, after circling around them, then they sit down and have a feast.

- I was intrigued by Terrence's marriage symbol idea.  It seems plausible just because other life doesn't have the Human male/female relationships. The other reason why I was intrigued was that I've been thinking of knowledge as the missing feedback loop that keeps us alive.

There's transhumanists who want to upload themselves to a nano-crystal computer.  They think a nanocomputer can get their pattern, and therefore, by uploading, they can attain eternal life. My idea is to keep the biological life going.

I suppose I could put a video I made a few months back. I describe my ideas of Transhumanism there. I put some stuff that I didn't get around to integrating in the video, in the replies section. But, the Terrence W. Deacon's "The Symbolic Species" marriage idea, if correct, leads to my more biological Transhumanism,

As I describe in the video, the first life was autopoietic.  It's a cyle of chemicals that makes each other. So long as the energy and materials keep flowing into the cell, the cell can live forever. Multi-cellular life breaks this pattern.  Biologists often say themselves that multi-cellular life invents death. 

I'm saying mankind is the science/technologically dependent species, and that knowledge is how we survive, and soon perhaps, the missing feedback loop to keep our biological selves going.