Was Leonardo Da Vinci lazy or out of his depth?

Abulafia

Abulafia

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From Da Vinci's notebook there's evidence that he had drawn up blueprints for all manner of objects and inventions such as the helicoptor, automobile, and parachute.

So why didn't he finish what he started and invent them? Did he not have the materials? Were they just wishful thinking of the time that, eventually, became a reality? Or was he just lazy?

Broadband users can view Da Vinci's notebook at Turning the Pages; the British library's website (click here)
 
Well, it's often said that Leonardo had ADD. One of the characteristics of ADD is that people come up with all sorts of brilliant ideas but quickly get bored of them, or distracted by more brilliant ideas. Another good example from history might be Origen of Alexandria. That might explain it.

Quite apart from which, I don't think it's entirely fair to say that Leonardo was lazy because he sketched a helicopter but didn't build it. I mean, come on! He wasn't lounging around drinking beer when he could have been doing it. He was doing lots of other stuff, such as painting pictures full of mystical pagan meanings, or something. He didn't have unlimited resources and time. And he did his best to test and develop the ideas that he was most interested in, such as great big wings. It's just that he had a few others too, that were lower priority from his point of view.
 
Abulafia said:
You believe this?
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Oh, but it's been proved that Mona Lisa is Leonardo himself, and that the uneven backdrop represents the inequality of men and women, and there's no chalice in The Last Supper, and Mary Magdelene is in the place of John, and - er -

No.
 
Abulafia said:
From Da Vinci's notebook there's evidence that he had drawn up blueprints for all manner of objects and inventions such as the helicoptor, automobile, and parachute.
Click to expand...

The "helicopter" could never have flown. The "automobile" was significantly lacking in sources of power. Amazingly, some daft soul actually did a jump in a Da Vinci parachute and survived, but the absence of a central venting hole makes it dangerously unstable.

Leonardo is possibly the most overrated man ever. I drew a picture of the Starship Enterprise once, but I have yet to be hailed as the inventor of warp drive as a result.
 
Kafka2 said:
The "helicopter" could never have flown. The "automobile" was significantly lacking in sources of power. Amazingly, some daft soul actually did a jump in a Da Vinci parachute and survived, but the absence of a central venting hole makes it dangerously unstable.

Leonardo is possibly the most overrated man ever. I drew a picture of the Starship Enterprise once, but I have yet to be hailed as the inventor of warp drive as a result.
Click to expand...

You have to wait until Warp drive is a reality Kafka2, then we will look back on you as a great inventor with vision.. :lol:
 
@Kafka: it thougth that leonardo made many intentional "mistakes" in his inventions to keep people who would take the ideas for themselvs from being able to use it properlly; point and case- the famous "Tank" of leaonardo would not have worked, because its gears were reveresed int he drawing

On the Geneal subject
Leonardo did not have the financial backing to go off and do what ever he wished to do inventionwise; if he had, then the tank, and the paddle warship he had desgined obviouslly would have made the italian prince he was workign for the most potent military force in europe; pity he never found the money to do it...
 
Xen said:
@Kafka: it thougth that leonardo made many intentional "mistakes" in his inventions to keep people who would take the ideas for themselvs from being able to use it properlly; point and case- the famous "Tank" of leaonardo would not have worked, because its gears were reveresed int he drawing
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Aw, come on. The "helicopter" would take a lot more than a gear reversal to work. It's just an inverted Archimedean Screw- an invention made nearly 2000 years early by a true genius who actually invented things that worked.
 
I doubt the helicopter or automobile would have worked. They did not have a source of power like we have today, gasoline. I don't even think the steam engine was invented by then.
 
A) the "souce of power" is muscle power how you could all be blind to that, i dont know; it seesm rather obvious to me, that either humans, or horses would be utlized for the majority of the works

B)@Kafka; you might be right about the helicopter; but until some one works up the gonads to go test it, we might not know; of course, we also have to remember, he as an artist; half of those things may not have even been possible in leonardos own mind, but rather little tests and flights of fancy in the realm of design; after all, when drew your spaceship kafka,, you didnt plan to go find the funding to build one did you? ;)
 
He was a great artist and anatomist. I'll concede that happily. However, when it comes to inventions and all-round genius he wasn't in the same league as Archimedes.
 
well, he was certianlly on the right track; its very unfortunate that the ideas of his that would have worked; his paddle warship, and his tank first and foremost, were no adopted; though I'll say that very few people could beat the genius of archimedes; particuralye if the tales of him, essentially, making a primitive laser to destroy Roman warships was true ;)
 
Xen said:
well, he was certianlly on the right track; its very unfortunate that the ideas of his that would have worked; his paddle warship, and his tank first and foremost, were no adopted; though I'll say that very few people could beat the genius of archimedes; particuralye if the tales of him, essentially, making a primitive laser to destroy Roman warships was true ;)
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Yes he used a giant mirror and focused beam of light from the sun on the Roman war ships and burnt them.
 
I don't like the alternatives: 'lazy' or 'out of his depth' have nothing to do with it IMO.

It's a long long way from inventing the concept or the principle of a new machine to actually building a working model, and I'm sure Da Vinci knew this very well. He imagined machines that were mostly way ahead of the engineering capabilities of his time, and very sensibly, IMO, desisted from trying to actually build them.
Imagining the concept of a helicopter or automobile with so many details visualized much like we build them today is a great intellectual feat in itself - if he had actually tried to build a helicopter, say, he could have spent the rest of his life working just on that, probably unsuccessfully, and I'm sure he knew that very well.
 
its said he did that; but there is no physical proof he did it.
 
Was Leonardo lazy? Hell no!
Was he an Artist? Sometimes. An inventor? Constantly it seems.

But all one has to do is follow the money: Leonardo was... a courtier. You know, on of those sychophants trying to entertain whatever prince was footing the bill. And these princes, well gee, they had some strange priorities.

So, Leonardo spent his time build water organs, planning the entertainment at parties, designing stage props and scenography for allegorical representations of whatever prince's virtues and victories (this symbolical stuff was actually politically important in the Renaissance).

Sure the princes were inetrested in war machines, but they were also interested in Whopping Big Statues of themselves. I.e. the case of the Sforza prince of Milan (forget his name). He hired Leonardo, who came equipped with his little drawings and a smashing plan for building sewers for Milan (might have cut down the death rate from colera etc.). Unfortunately all this Sforza guy wanted was a Massive equestrian statue, the biggest ever. So Leonardo spent several years sculpting models and trying to solve all the problems with casting bronze on a hitherto unparalleld scale. In the end nothing came of all this, not even that damn statue. But Leonardo certainly seems to have earned his wages.

This would also disprove the ADD-theory. (Which I would think is part of "the pathological school of history", the one speculating that Nietzsche's philosophy was caused by his syphilis and Wittgensteins by his supposed autism. And Napoleon lost his wars due to some very strange illnessess making his penis shrink, or so I've been told.)

As far as esoteric messages in Leonardo's paintings, they are full of them. However, they are nothing like the ones dreamt up by Dan Brown (who nicked it from Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, who nicked it from Gérard de Sède, who was probabaly a dupe for Jean Cocteau's 1950's "pataphysical" art happening, the Grand Conspiracy Theory of the "Priory of Sion".)
No, Leonardo stuck to the "Hermetic" tradition that the renaissance knew and loved. (The idea that there was textual evidence of God's plan for Creation older than the Bible; the writings of the "Egyptian" Hermes Trismeghistos most importantly.) He wasn't alone in this. Botticelli's and Michelangelo's work were just as full of these references.

The reason Leonardo didn't pursue more of his ideas or paint more pictures, was simply that he was paid to do other stuff, but such that we have no trace of it or consider it trivial. IMHO a superb reason.:)
 
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