Notebooks (7 page)
Authors: Leonardo da Vinci,Irma Anne Richter,Thereza Wells
Tags: #History, #Fiction, #General, #European, #Art, #Renaissance, #Leonardo;, #Leonardo, #da Vinci;, #1452-1519, #Individual artists, #Art Monographs, #Drawing By Individual Artists, #Notebooks; sketchbooks; etc, #Individual Artist, #History - Renaissance, #Renaissance art, #Individual Painters - Renaissance, #Drawing & drawings, #Drawing, #Techniques - Drawing, #Individual Artists - General, #Individual artists; art monographs, #Art & Art Instruction, #Techniques
NOTEBOOKS
I
TRUE SCIENCE
Leonardo’s view of what science should be foreshadows the critical and constructive methods of modern times. He proceeded step by step.
(1)
Experience of the world around us as gained through the senses is taken as the starting-point.
(2)
Reason and contemplation, which, though linked to the senses, stands above and outside them, deduces eternal and general laws from transitory and particular experiences.
(3)
These general laws must be demonstrated in logical sequence like mathematical propositions, and finally
(4)
they must be tested and verified by experiment, and then applied to the production of works of utility or of art according to plan. Truth could therefore be verified. He was opposed to philosophical systems founded solely on words.
I. EXPERIENCE(1)
Experience of the world around us as gained through the senses is taken as the starting-point.
(2)
Reason and contemplation, which, though linked to the senses, stands above and outside them, deduces eternal and general laws from transitory and particular experiences.
(3)
These general laws must be demonstrated in logical sequence like mathematical propositions, and finally
(4)
they must be tested and verified by experiment, and then applied to the production of works of utility or of art according to plan. Truth could therefore be verified. He was opposed to philosophical systems founded solely on words.
Consider now, O reader! what trust can we place in the ancients, who tried to define what the Soul and Life are—which are beyond proof—whereas those things which can at any time be clearly known and proved by experience remained for many centuries unknown or falsely understood.
Many will think that they can with reason blame me, alleging that my proofs are contrary to the authority of certain men held in great reverence by their inexperienced judgements, not considering that my works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.
These rules enable you to know the true from the false—and this induces men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation—and they forbid you to use a cloak of ignorance, which will bring about that you attain to no result and in despair abandon yourself to melancholy.
I am fully aware that the fact of my not being a man of letters may cause certain presumptuous persons to think that they may with reason blame me, alleging that I am a man without learning. Foolish folk! Do they not know that I might retort by saying, as did Marius to the Roman Patricians: ‘They who adorn themselves in the labours of others will not permit me my own.’* They will say that because I have no book learning, I cannot properly express what I desire to treat of—but they do not know that my subjects require for their exposition experience rather than the words of others. Experience has been the mistress of whoever has written well; and so as mistress I will cite her in all cases.
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1
Though I have no power to quote from authors as they have, I shall rely on a far bigger and more worthy thing—on experience, the instructress of their masters. They strut about puffed up and pompous, decked out and adorned not with their own labours, but by those of others, and they will not even allow me my own. And if they despise me who am an inventor, how much more should they be blamed who are not inventors but trumpeters and reciters of the works of others.
Those who are inventors and interpreters between Nature and Man as compared with the reciters and trumpeters of the works of others, are to be regarded simply as is an object in front of a mirror in comparison with its image seen in the mirror, the one being something in itself, the other nothing: people whose debt to nature is small, since they are only by chance invested with the human form, and but for this, I might class them with the herds of beasts.
2
2
Seeing that I cannot find any subject of great utility or pleasure, because the men who have come before me have taken for their own all useful and necessary themes, I will do like one who, because of his poverty, is the last to arrive at the fair, and not being able otherwise to provide for himself, takes all the things which others have already seen and not taken but refused as being of little value; I will load my modest pack with these despised and rejected wares, the leavings of many buyers; and will go about distributing, not indeed in great cities, but in the poor hamlets, taking such reward as the thing I give may be worth.
1
1
The abbreviators* (of works) do harm to knowledge and to love, for the love of anything is the offspring of knowledge, love being more fervent in proportion as knowledge is more certain. And this certainty springs from a complete knowledge of all the parts which united compose the whole of the thing which ought to be loved.
Of what use, then, is he who in order to abridge the part of the things of which he professes to give complete information leaves out the greater part of the things of which the whole is composed. True it is that impatience, the mother of folly, is she who praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body. And then they want to comprehend the mind of God which embraces the whole universe, weighing and mincing it into infinite parts as if they had dissected it. O human stupidity! do you not perceive that you have spent your whole life with yourself, and yet are not aware of the thing you chiefly possess, that is of your folly? And so with the crowd of sophists you deceive yourself and others, despising the mathematical sciences in which is contained the true information about the subjects of which they treat. And then you would fain occupy yourself with miracles and write and give information of those things of which the human mind is incapable, and which cannot be proved by any instance from nature. And you fancy you have wrought miracles when you have spoiled the work of some ingenuous mind and do not perceive that you are falling into the same error as he who strips a tree of its adornment of branches laden with leaves intermingled with fragrant flowers or fruit in order to demonstrate the suitability of the tree for making planks. As did Justinus,* abridging the histories of Trogus Pompeius, who had written in an ornate style all the great deeds of his forefathers full of admirable and picturesque descriptions; and by so doing composed a bald work fit only for such impatient minds who fancy they are wasting time when they spend it usefully in the study of works of nature and the deeds of men.
3
3
All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
4
4
The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding may most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature.
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5
Experience never errs; it is only your judgement that errs in promising itself results as are not caused by your experiments. Because, given a beginning, what follows from it must be its true consequence unless there is an impediment. And should there be an impediment, the result which ought to follow from the aforesaid beginning will partake of this impediment in a greater or less degree in proportion as this impediment is more or less powerful than the aforesaid beginning. Experience does not err, it is only your judgement that errs in expecting from her what is not in her power. Wrongly do men complain of Experience and with bitter reproaches accuse her of leading them astray. Let Experience alone, and rather turn your complaints against your own ignorance, which causes you to be carried away by your vain and foolish desires as to expect from Experience things which are not within her power; saying that she is fallacious. Wrongly do men complain of innocent Experience, accusing her often of deceit and lying demonstrations.
6
6
To me it seems that all sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, mother of all certainty, and that are not tested by Experience; that is to say, that do not at their origin, middle, or end, pass through any of the five senses. For if we are doubtful about the certainty of things that pass through the senses how much more should we question the many things against which these senses rebel, such as the nature of God and the soul and the like, about which there are endless disputes and controversies. And truly it so happens that where reason is not, its place is taken by clamour. This never occurs when things are certain. Therefore, where there are quarrels, there true science is not; because truth can only end one way—wherever it is known controversy is silenced for all time, and should controversy nevertheless again arise, then our conclusions must have been uncertain and confused and not truth reborn.
All true sciences are the result of Experience which has passed through our senses, thus silencing the tongues of litigants. Experience does not feed investigators on dreams, but always proceeds from accurately determined first principles, step by step in true sequences to the end; as can be seen in the elements of mathematics. . . . Here no one argues as to whether twice three is more or less than six or whether the angles of a triangle are less than two right angles. Here all arguments are ended by eternal silence and these sciences can be enjoyed by their devotees in peace. This the deceptive purely speculative sciences cannot achieve.
7
7
Beware of the teaching of these speculators, because their reasoning is not confirmed by Experience.
8
II. REASON AND NATURE’S LAWS8
The senses are of the earth; reason stands apart from them in contemplation.
9
9
Wisdom is the daughter of experience.*
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10
Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human species, teaches that that which this nature works among mortals constrained by necessity cannot operate in any other way than that in which reason, which is its rudder, teaches it to work.
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First I shall test by experiment before I proceed further, because my intention is to consult experience first and then with reasoning show why such experience is bound to operate in such a way. And this is the true rule by which those who analyse the effects of nature must proceed: and although nature begins with the cause and ends with the experience, we must follow the opposite course, namely, begin with the experience, and by means of it investigate the cause.
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O marvellous necessity, thou with supreme reason constrainest all effects to be the direct result of their causes, and by a supreme and irrevocable law every natural action obeys thee by the shortest possible process.
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Nature does not break her law; nature is constrained by the logical necessity of her law which is inherent in her.
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Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.
Necessity is the theme and inventor of nature, its eternal curb and law.
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15
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