Learning from Leonardo: decoding the notebooks of a genius

Capra, Fritjof

ISBN 10: 1609949897 / ISBN 13: 9781609949891

Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, 2014

About this Item

xiii, 380 pages illustrations (some color) 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-361) and index. ; First Edition ; 1st printing.

Seller Inventory # 111897

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Learning from Leonardo: decoding the notebooks of a genius
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1609949897
• ISBN 13: 9781609949891
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science

About this title

Synopsis

“This remarkable exposition of Leonardo’s work” illuminates how he was centuries ahead of his time—and the lessons we can learn from his style of thought (Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University).

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, scientist, engineer, mathematician, architect, and inventor. But he was also, Fritjof Capra argues, a profoundly modern man. Capra’s decade-long study of Leonardo’s fabled notebooks reveal him as a “systems thinker” centuries before the term was coined. Leonardo believed the key to understanding the world was in perceiving the connections between phenomena and the larger patterns formed by those relationships.

Seeing the world as a dynamic, integrated whole, Leonardo often used concepts from one area to illuminate problems in another. For example, his studies of the movement of water informed his ideas about how landscapes are shaped, how sap rises in plants, how air moves over a bird’s wing, and how blood flows in the human body. His observations of nature enhanced his art, his drawings were integral to his scientific studies and architectural designs.

Capra describes seven defining characteristics of Leonardo da Vinci’s genius and includes a list of over forty discoveries Leonardo made that weren’t rediscovered until centuries later. His overview of Leonardo’s thought follows the organizational scheme Leonardo himself intended to use if he ever published his notebooks. So in a sense, this is Leonardo’s science as he himself would have presented it.

About the Author

Fritjof Capra, PhD, physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy. Capra is on the faculty of Schumacher College in England and frequently gives management seminars for top executives. He is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point, The Web of Life, The Hidden Connections, and The Science of Leonardo.