{"id":15719,"date":"2019-05-01T15:16:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T14:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acasinhadamatematica.pt\/?p=15719"},"modified":"2020-10-29T00:04:29","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T00:04:29","slug":"leonardo-the-man-who-saved-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acasinhadamatematica.pt\/?p=15719","title":{"rendered":"Leonardo: The Man Who Saved Science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Leonardo da Vinci<\/a> is, of course, best known as one of the world\u2019s greatest artists. At his death in 1519, he was famous for such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa<\/a><\/em> and The Last Supper<\/a><\/em>. But he was more than a painter, he was also a musician, writer, and showman. In the pages of his notebooks, written in a secretive reverse script, and unpublished for more than 400 years, we discover yet another Leonardo, the man of science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His notebooks contain plans for hundreds of inventions that would be created hundreds of years later including the machine guns, diving suits, construction cranes, robots, flying machines, and more. Was Leonardo a genius? A prophet who anticipated the modern age by 500 years? Or was there another explanation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the many inventions attributed to Leonardo is the parachute. But did he actually invent it? In 1968, researchers discovered sketches from the studio of 15th<\/sup>-century Italian inventor Mariano do Jacopa<\/a>, known as Taccola, which were similar to Leonardo\u2019s study for such a device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis drawing, the design for a parachute, is the oldest known to us and it is very similar to Leonardo\u2019s,\u201d says Andrea Bernardoni, historian at the Galileo Museum<\/a>. \u201cIt was found in a manuscript conserved at the British Library<\/a> in London. Leonardo knew manuscripts from the Sienese<\/a> engineering tradition and he even refers to Taccola\u2019s drawings in his manuscripts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taccola, who was 70 years older than Leonardo and died the year before Leonardo was born, was an engineer of the early Renaissance and among the first to use drawings as a design tool. But just as Leonardo copied from him, Taccola\u2019s idea is copied from a Muslim inventor, Abbas Ibn Firnas<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing the parachute was not Leonardo\u2019s original idea, why is he still considered the inventor?  \u201cThe incredible thing is that Leonardo is the first to write about the material needed to make this object: cloth made of waxed flax, so that the air doesn\u2019t come through and it becomes waterproof, like the feathers of the birds,\u201d notes Mario Taddei<\/a>, technical director, Leonardo3<\/a>. \u201cFor the first time, he describes how this object has to be built; he\u2019s the only one to think about the dimensions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leonardo, The Man Who Saved Science<\/em><\/strong>, features drawings of his most famous ideas and inventions, some of which trace their original creation to ancient Greece while others were a product of the scientific inventions of the golden age of Islamic learning. Leonardo never affirmed that his projects came from his original ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Leonardo just a copycat?  Or, as the program suggests, did he, in reinventing ancient technology, spark a renewed interest in scientific experimentation lost in Europe during the Dark Ages until the Renaissance. \u201cDealing with a problem or understanding a phenomenon for him meant to see how it is related to other phenomena,\u201d says Fritjof Capra<\/a>, historian of science. \u201cIn this way, I think, he generated what we now call the scientific method, and he singlehandedly created the scientific method.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n