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Leonardo da Vinci

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2017-11-17
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2017-11-17
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  1. “The second one take notes on paper 500 years later, Leonardo's notebooks are around to astonish and inspire us. Fifty years from now, our own notebooks, if we work up the initiative to start writing them down, will be around to astonish and inspire our grandchildren, unlike our tweets and Facebook posts. And this is what I'm going to close on and probably my favorite one. Be open to mystery. Not everything needs sharp lines. If you are interested in reading the book and you want to help out the podcast, you can go to founderspodcast.com. You will see a link for the book. That link is an Amazon affiliate link, which means that if you click through and buy the book through there, Amazon gives me a small portion of the sale at no additional cost to you. And I do appreciate if you do that, not only this book, but any book that I've covered, I think it's like...”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Horse, he drilled down for the pure joy of geeking out. Another principle here. This one is counterintuitive, and I think many of us beat ourselves up about it, but this is what he says about it. His next principle is procrastinate. While painting the last supper, Leonardo would sometimes stare at the work for an hour, finally making one small stroke and then leave. And again, I know I repeated this, but previously in the book, but it appears again in the conclusion. He told Duke Ludovico that creativity requires time for ideas to marinate and intuitions to gel. Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least. For their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form. Most of us don't need advice to procrastinate, we to it naturally. But procrastinating like Leonardo requires work. It involves gathering all the possible facts and ideas and only after that allowing the collection.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Himself to be driven by pure curiosity, he got to explore more horizons and see more connections than anyone else of his era. And I think that's extremely important now when you're trying to think of if you want to design a product or create a podcast or do anything, you just expose yourself to a lot of things. And like Elon Musk says, let the computation happen. And then you'll be surprised by the results that happen when you're constantly exposed and not just focused on one thing. To that extent, here's another one of his principles. Go down rabbit holes. He filled the opening pages of one of his notebooks with 169 attempts to square a circle. In eight pages of his codecs, he recorded 735 findings about the flow of water. In another notebook, he listed sixty seven words that describe different types of moving water. He measured every segment of the human body, calculated their proportional relationships, and then did the same for all.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “She kind of reminds me of this all the time because if you have children or little kids or even if you don't have them, you're around them, you see that they very much live in the moment. And she's very inquisitive about stuff that's going on. She asks just questions I would never think to ask. And every time this happens to me, I sit there and think like, wow, I'm jaded by adulthood. Like, that is pretty amazing or that is something to wonder about. And I just look at it just because I'm used to it. I don't know any effective techniques to jar myself out of this, but other than being aware of it and hopefully changing it over time. Another one here. Seek knowledge for its own sake. Not all knowledge needs to be useful. Sometimes it should be pursued for pure pleasure. Leonardo did not need to know how the heart valve works to paint the Mona Lisa, nor did he need to figure out how fossils got to the top of mountains to produce the virgins of the rocks.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Be curious, relentlessly curious. I have no special talents, Einstein once wrote to a friend. I am just passionately curious. Leonardo actually did have special talents, as did Einstein, but his distinguishing and most inspiring trait was his intense curiosity. He wanted to know what causes people to yawn, how they walk on ice, methods for squaring a circle, what makes the aortic valve clothes, how light is processed in the eye, and what that means for the perspective in a painting. He instructed himself to learn about the placenta of a calf, the jaw of a crocodile, the tongue of a woodpecker, the muscles of a face, the light of the moon, the edges of shadows, being relentlessly and randomly curious about everything around us is something that each of us can push ourselves to do every waking hour just as he did. Let me go off on a tangent here. I have a five-year-old.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The fact that Leonardo was not only a genius but also very human, quirky and obsessive and playful and easily distracted makes him more accessible. He was not graced with the type of brilliance that is completely unfathomable to the rest of us. Instead, he was self taught and willed his way to his genius, so even though we may never be able to match his talents, we can learn from him and try to be more like him. His life offers a wealth of lessons. I think that paragraph there perfectly summarizes why I'm recommending you read this book. Okay, so here's some, we're gonna get into some of these principles. I'm not gonna share all of them. I'm just gonna share one that spoke to me.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Anecdotes from him. Leonardo made a point of not expounding much on religion during his lifetime. He said that he would not endeavor, this is now direct quotes from him, to write or give information of those things of which the human mind is incapable and which cannot be proved by an instance of nature. That goes back to his desire to prioritize experiences over theory. Just another quote I really liked of his, As a well-spent day brings a happy sleep, Leonardo had written, so a well-employed life brings a happy death. To me, that's just him reminding all of us, don't waste any time. Adding on to that, the best way to approach his life is the way he approached the world, filled with a sense of curiosity and appreciation for its infinite wonders.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So the chapter on his anatomical studies continues for quite a while. I want to skip ahead to some other ideas that I learned from Leonardo by reading this book. This one's really an interesting thought. It's his idea on the microcosm and the macrocosm. And this is a short part. During the period when he was probing the human body, Leonardo was also studying the body of the Earth. True to form, he made analogies between the two. He was skillful at discerning how patterns resonate in nature and the grandest and most encompassing of these analogies in both his art and his science was the comparison between the body of man and the body of the earth. Man is the image of the world, he wrote, known as the microcosm macrocosm relationship, it harkened back to the ancients. Leonardo first discussed this analogy in a notebook entry from the early 1490s, and this is just a part I wanted to tell you about.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “On the same list, Leonardo instructed himself to describe the jaw of the crocodile. Once again, if we follow his curiosity rather than merely being amused by it, we can see that he was on to another important topic. A crocodile, unlike any mammal, has a second jaw joint, which spreads out the force when it snaps its mouth shut. That gives the crocodile the most forceful bite of any animal. It can exert thirty seven hundred pounds per square inch of force, which is more than thirty times that of a human bite.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “On a later page where he described and drew the human tongue. Make the motions of the woodpecker, he wrote. When I first saw his entry about the woodpecker, I regarded it as most scholars have, as an entertaining oddity, evidence of the eccentric nature of Leonardo's relentless curiosity. That it indeed is, but there is more, as I discovered after pushing myself to be more likely Leonardo and drill down into random curiosities. Leonardo, I realized, had become fascinated by the muscles of the tongue. All of the other muscles he studied acted by pulling rather than pushing a body part, but the tongue seemed to be an exception. This was true in humans and in other animals. Nobody has drawn or fully written about it before, but Leonardo with his acute ability to observe objects in motion knew that there was something to be learned from it.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Some small drawings of veins and nerves found in the brain of the centurion, with writing crammed all around them. Have this is now Leonardo writing, have Afisena's book on useful inventions translated, he wrote, referring to a book by the eleventh century Persian polymath, have, having drawn very surgical tools, he jotted down some of the equipment he needed. Spectacles with case, fire stick, fork, curve knight, charcoal, boards, sheets of paper, white chalk, wax, forceps, pane of glass, fine tooth bone saw, scappel, ink horn, penknife, and get a hold of a skull. Then comes my favorite item on any Leonardo list describe the tongue of the woodpecker. This is not just a random entry. He mentioned the woodpecker's tongue again.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “This is him speaking now. I made an autopsy in order to ascertain the cause of so peaceful a death and found it that it proceeded from weakness throughout the failure of blood and of the artery that feeds the heart and the other lower members, which I found to be very dry, shrunken, and withered, he wrote, Next to a drawing of the veins in the right arm, he compared the centurion's blood vessels to those of a two year old boy who had also died at a hospital. He found those of the boy to be supple and unconstricted, contrary to what I found in the old man. Using his skill of thinking and describing through analogies, he concluded, the network of vessels behave in a man as in oranges, in which the peel becomes tougher, and the pulp diminishes the older they become. The constriction of blood flow had caused among other things the centurion's liver to become so dry that when it is subjected to even the slightest friction.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Before he left Florence in 1508, Leonardo was at the hospital where he struck up a conversation with a man who said he was more than a hundred years old and had never been ill. A few hours later the old man quietly passed away without any movement or sign of distress. Leonardo proceeded to dissect his body, launching what would be from fifteen oh eight to fifteen thirteen his second round of anatomical studies. We should pause to imagine the dandy dressing Leonardo now in his mid fifties at the height of his fame as a painter, spending his night hours at an old hospital in his neighborhood talking to patients and dissecting bodies. It is another example of his relentless curiosity that would astonish us if we had not become so used to it. Now speaking about his drawings, the results are triumphs of both science and art.”

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  14. “One day, Leonardo was walking with a friend through one of the central piazzas of Florence wearing one of his distinctive rose pink tunics. There was a small group discussing a passage from Dante, and they asked Leonardo his opinion of its meaning. At that moment Michelangelo came by, and Leonardo suggested that he might be able to explain it. Michelangelo took offense as if Leonardo were mocking him. No, explain it yourself, he shot back. You were the one who modeled a horse to be cast in bronze, was unable to do it and was forced to give up the attempt in shame. He then turned and walked away. On another occasion when Michelangelo encountered Leonardo, he again referred to the fiasco of the horse monument saying So those idiot Milanese actually believed in you. Unlike Leonardo, Michelangelo was often contentious. He had once insulted the young artist.”

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  15. “Designing inventions for use by military, which is something that in a war, which is something Leonardo was extremely interested in. So I want to give you an example of that here. Diverting the Arno River from its course and taking it away from Pisa. It was an audacious wit, it was an audacious way, this is Leonardo's idea. It was an audacious way to reconquer the city without storming the wall or wielding any weapons. If the river could be channeled somewhere else, Pisa would be cut off from the sea and lose its source of supply. So this is Borgios trying to figure out how to overtake Pizza and this is what Leonardo comes up with. The primary advocates of the idea included the two clever friends who had been holed up together that past winter, Leonardo da Vinci and Nicola Machiavelli. The river that is to be diverted from one course to another must be coaxed and not treated roughly or with violence, Leonardo wrote in his notebook. His plan was to dig a huge ditch thirty two feet deep upriver from Pisa and use dams to divert the water from the river.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “As if caught by a whim or passion, he would arrive suddenly in the middle of the day, climb the scaffolding, seize a brush, apply a brush stroke or two to one of the figures, and then suddenly depart. When Leonardo was summoned by the Duke, this is the person that gave him the commission for it, they ended up having this is the most important part why I included this for the podcast. They ended up having a discussion of how creativity occurs. Sometimes it requires going slowly, pausing, even procrastinating. That allows ideas to marinate Leonardo explained. Intuition needs nurturing. This is now a direct quote from Leonardo. Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, he told the Duke, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Of work, and he has this really interesting idea of creativity. And I want to share that with you. When Leonardo was painting The Last Supper, spectators would visit and sit quietly just so they could watch him work. The creation of art, like the discussion of science, had become at times a public event. According to the count of a priest, Leonardo would come here in the early hours of the morning and mount the scaffolding, and then remain there brush in hand from sunrise to sunset, forgetting to eat or drink, painting continually. On other days, now we're going to say that didn't happen all the time, on other days, however, nothing would be painted. He would remain in front of it for one or two hours and contemplate it in solitude, examining and criticizing to himself the figures he had created. Then there were dramatic days that combined his obsessiveness and his pen for procrastination.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And he goes into what's the practical application of experience over theory. In his notebook, he described his method, almost like a trick for closely observing a scene or an object. Look carefully and separately at each detail. He compared it to looking at the page of a book, which is meaningless when taken in as a whole and instead needs to be looked at word by word. Deep observation must be done in steps from Leonardo here. If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects, begin with the details of them and do not go on to the second step until you have first well fixed until you have the first well fixed in your memory. What would that look like in his work? So I want to skip ahead a little bit to hopefully describe that to you. So this is about the commission on the last supper. And this talks about the commission and then about his way.”

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  19. “The pompous fools who would disparage him for this. Now, this is directly quote from Leonardo. 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 desire to describe, but they do not know that my subjects require experience rather than the words of others. His lack of reverence for authority and his willingness to challenge received wisdom would lead him to craft an empirical approach for understanding nature that foreshadowed the scientific method developed more than a century later by Bacon and Guy.”

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  20. “Let's go ahead and jump into today's book, and we're going to start in his introduction. This is Isaac Sin talking directly to the reader. I embarked on this book because Leonardo da Vinci is the ultimate example of the main theme of my previous biographies, how the ability to make connections across disciplines, arts and science, humanities and technology, is a key to innovation, imagination, and genius. Benjamin Franklin, a previous subject of mine, was a Leonardo of his era, with no formal education, he taught himself to become an imaginative polymath who was Enlightenment America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist. He proved by flying a kite that lightning is electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses, enchanting musical instruments, clean burning stoves.”

    2017-11-17 · Founders · #15 Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source