Learning from Leonardo; Decoding the Notebooks of a Genius

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, scientist, engineer, mathematician, architect, inventor, and even musician. But he was also a profoundly modern man. Not only did Leonardo invent the empirical scientific method, but Capra's study of Leonardo's notebooks reveals that he was a systems thinker centuries before the term was coined.

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Leonardo da Vinci is celebrated as the archetypal Renaissance man. He made extraordinary discoveries in numerous fields and pioneered entire disciplines, among them fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, theoretical botany, and embryology. Leonardo's unique synthesis of art, science, and technology is not only fascinating intellectually but also very relevant to our time-it prefigures modern systems theory.

Our sciences and technologies have become increasingly narrow in their focus, unable to understand our multi-faceted problems from an interdisciplinary perspective; and our business and political leaders are often incapable of "connecting the dots." This is exactly what we can learn from Leonardo. As the author shows throughout the book, Da Vinci practiced a science and technology that honored and respected the unity of all life, recognized the fundamental interdependence of all natural phenomena, and connected the microcosm (the human being) with the macrocosm (the living Earth). That is exactly the kind of science and technology we need today.