Leonardo da Vinci: The Heretic and Master Inventor
... in order to systemize his knowledge. Furthermore, he moved into areas of architecture and city planning after Milan was struck by a plague in 1484-85. As a man of the Renaissance, da Vinci was a man of keen observation and reason who mastered many fields outside of his original art. He applied mathematics to all forms of his works and arrived at fantastic results in mathematics, engineering, and architecture through his use of geometry. In his notebook, da Vinci remarks, “Perspective is a rational demonstration whereby experience confirms how all things transmit their images to the eye by pyramidal lines. By pyramidal lines I mean those that start from the extremities of the surface of bodies, and by gradually converging from a distance arrive at the same point being ... in this particular case located in the eye, which is the universal judge of all objects.” Da Vinci through his reference to pyramidal lines is applying geometric lines to the artistic technique of perspective. While many artists undoubtedly made use of this technique of perspective, few sought to understand the basic underlying principles behind its operation. While this observation may seem obvious or self evident to the educated individual today, it is important to realize that da Vinci was a pioneer in principled observation and explanation. Da Vinci continues in his explanation of perspective in his journals and observes: “A second object as far removed from the first is from the eye will appear half the size of the first, although they are the same size. A small object near at hand and a large one at a distance, will appear the same size..” Such reasoning was further evidences that da Vinci was reviving the questioning spirit of the ancient Greeks and Romans while distancing himself from the teachings of the Catholic Church which emphasized faith rather than reason at this point in history. Furthermore, it clearly proves his eye for keen observation which would be necessary to his engineering works. Da Vinci's principled, questioning observation is a crucial Renaissance concept which illustrates his genius. While, men of a generation earlier perhaps would have ignored the reasons behind why something worked, da Vinci's questioning spirit needed to find how the principle operated. Da Vinci's Renaissance learning can be seen in his sketch “The Proportions of Man”. In this sketch, da Vinci utilizes geometry in order to accurately depict the proportion of man with his limbs in differing positions. He achieves this goal by circumscribing the man in a circle and square in which one base of the square is tangent to the lowest point the circle. This device allows da Vinci, as well as the casual observer to immediately recognize the proportionality of the man without any measuring device. The intent of da Vinci is made clear through his notebook. He writes: “If you set your legs so far apart as to take a fourteenth part from your height, and you open and raise your arms until you touch the lines of the crown of the head with your middle fingers, you must know that the center of the circle formed by the extremities of the outstretched limbs will be the navel, and the space between the legs will form an equilateral triangle.” Da Vinci has observed basic geometric principles in the very structural nature of man. This is unprecedented in the history of the world at da Vinci's time as he is applying reason and mathematical concepts to those of nature and man himself. Taken out of context, this would appear to be thought from the Enlightenment however, da Vinci has reached similar conclusions centuries ahead of his time. Da Vinci also seems to take an Enlightenment outlook in terms of his outlook on war. While he viewed it as a barbaric and disgusting part of human nature; it was a part of the nature of man and a necessity. Thus, he exploited this need by contracting his services in the engineering of new weapons. While, perhaps not a passion of da Vinci's, his sketches of military devices are true testament to his visionary genius. Many of his dawning seemed more reminiscent of eighteenth or nineteenth century weaponry while others did not materialize until the twentieth century. Some of his da Vinci's designs were more practical improvements of currently available weapons of his era. Da Vinci devised and clearly illustrated two ingenious systems to prevent the scaling of castle walls by invaders on ladders. The first acts as a large horizontal bar which would operate by moving outward to push over the ladders of those attempting to scale the wall. The other utilized horizontal sails powered by a large cogwheel which worked similar to windshield-wipers by throwing invaders off the wall. Additionally, da Vinci sought to improve the traditional weapon of the crossbow. To this end, he also devised two different designs. The first of which was the crossbow equivalent of a machine gun. The weapon operated by suspending an archer in the center of a large wheel turned by men. The tuning of the wheel would give tension to each of the four cross bows mounted in the wheel. To fire, the archer simply has to trigger the bow when it reaches the appropriate height. The second design is one of excellent graphical representation and well thought design. This crossbow carriage was over 76 feet long with an 80 foot bow. These examples of da Vinci's military designs show how he was able to take common military devices of his day and drastically improve them in terms of ease of use and effectiveness. Another set of da Vinci's military sketches falls into an entirely separate category as being a prophetic showing of his genius. One of his sketches shows what appears to be a finned ballistic missile. Da Vinci had studied affects of air resistance on ballistics and sought to remove it by streamlining projectiles. Thus, this narrow bodied missile has two fins which run along its tail to stabilize it and was filled with gunpowder which would ignite on impact. Most likely, it was designed to be launched from a catapult Thus, this weapon combines the reality of military technology of da Vinci's day with the modern technology of finned missiles. This is a clear example of da Vinci's forward thinking inventive nature. Missiles similar to the one depicted by da Vinci did not come into military use until World War II. (Though, to be fair, the missiles used by the Germans in World War Two were self propelled while da Vinci's weapon would have required a catapult.) Da Vinci's final engineering pursuit, and perhaps his most passionate was that of the flying machine. Throughout his life, da Vinci attempted to solve the mysteries of human flight. While, many of the flapping type machines which he designed may seem quite ridiculous by today's standards however, they were with clear purpose in mind. Da Vinci sought to replicate the motion of birds in order to lift man into the heavens. Unfortunately, the flapping machine is an unworkable machine as man does not have the muscle power to lift himself off the ground. Never the less, da Vinci designed increasingly complex and amazing models. His studies in aeronautics were not completely in vain as he was able to find practical applications for many of his studies. Da Vinci ...