Fritjof Capra Read Free Page A

exceptional ability to interconnect observations and ideas from different disciplines lies at the very heart of Leonardo’s approach to learning and research. At the same time, it was also the reason why he often got carried away and extended his investigations far beyond their original role in the formulation of a “science of painting,” exploring almost the entire range of natural phenomena known at his time as well as many others previously unrecognized.
    Leonardo’s scientific work was virtually unknown during his lifetime and remained hidden for over two centuries after his death in 1519. His pioneering discoveries and ideas had no direct influence on the scientists who came after him, although during the subsequent 450 years his conception of a science of living forms would emerge again at various times. During those periods, the problems he had struggled with were revisited with increasing levels of sophistication, as scientists advanced in their understanding of the structure of matter, the laws of chemistry and electromagnetism, cellular and molecular biology, genetics, and the critical role of evolution in shaping the forms of the living world.
    Today, from the vantage point of twenty-first-century science, we can recognize Leonardo da Vinci as an early precursor of an entire lineage of scientists and philosophers whose central focus was the nature of organic form. They include Immanuel Kant, Alexander von Humboldt, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the eighteenth century; Georges Cuvier, Charles Darwin, and D’Arcy Thompson in the nineteenth; Alexander Bogdanov, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and Vladimir Vernadsky in the early twentieth; and Gregory Bateson, Ilya Prigogine, and Humberto Maturana in the late twentieth century; as well as contemporary morphologists and complexity theorists like Brian Goodwin, Ian Stewart, and Ricard Solé.
    Leonardo’s organic conception of life has continued as an undercurrent of biology throughout the centuries, and during brief periods came to the fore and dominated scientific thought. However, none of the scientists in that lineage were aware that the great genius of the Renaissance had already pioneered many of the ideas they were exploring. While Leonardo’s manuscripts were gathering dust in ancient European libraries, Galileo Galilei was being celebrated as the “father of modern science.” I cannot help but argue that the true founder of modern science was Leonardo da Vinci, and I wonder how Western scientific thought would have developed had his Notebooks been known and widely studied soon after his death.
    SYNTHESIS OF ART AND SCIENCE
    To describe nature’s organic forms mathematically, we cannot use Euclidean geometry, nor the classical equations of Newtonian physics. We need a new kind of qualitative mathematics. Today, such a new mathematics is being formulated within the framework of complexity theory, technically known as nonlinear dynamics. 9 It involves complex nonlinear equations and computer modeling, in which curved shapes are analyzed and classified with the help of topology, a geometry of forms in movement. None of this was available to Leonardo, of course. But amazingly, he experimented with a rudimentary form of topology in his mathematical studies of “continuous quantities” and “transmutations,” long before this important branch of modern mathematics was developed by Henri Poincaré in the early twentieth century. 10
    Leonardo’s principal tool for the representation and analysis of nature’s forms was his extraordinary facility of drawing, which almost matched the quickness of his vision. Observation and documentation were fused into a single act. He used his artistic talent to produce drawings that are stunningly beautiful and at the same time serve as geometric diagrams. For Leonardo, drawing was the perfect vehicle to formulate his conceptual models—a perfect “mathematics” for his science of organic forms. 11
    The dual role of