Zusatztext Minutely researched! vividly written! and endlessly fascinating! The Science of Leonardo opens up a realm which has never been adequately appreciated. Dr. Oliver SacksIlluminating and impassioned . . . . A profound and clear exploration of Leonardo's scientific thought. The San Francisco Chronicle A delight . . . . Lucid and spirited! it sparks a whole series of ideas and questions for further investigation. American Scientist A fascinating glimpse of the road not taken by Western Science. Capra makes a compelling case that the science of the future may look a lot more like Leonardo's than Bacon's or Descartes -- a science of systems! non-reductive and akin to an art. Michael Pollan! author of Botany of Desire and Omnivore's Dilemma Vivid and compelling. . . . Leonardo himself would have nodded in approval of this book! because for the first time it crystallizes the entire body of his work into a coherent! unified whole. Michio Kaku! author of Physics of the Impossible Informationen zum Autor Fritjof Capra, Ph.D. , physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, which promotes ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education. Dr. Capra is the author of four international bestsellers, The Tao of Physics (1975), The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), and The Web of Life (1996). His most recent book, The Hidden Connections , was published in 2002.Capra has been the focus of over 50 television interviews, documentaries, and talk shows in Europe, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Japan, and has been featured in major international magazines and newspapers. He was the first subject of the BBC's new documentary series "Beautiful Minds" (2002). Klappentext Leonardo da Vinci's pioneering scientific work was virtually unknown during his lifetime. Acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Capra reveals that da Vinci was in many ways the unacknowledged "father of modern science." One Infinite Grace The earliest literary portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, and to me still the most moving, is that by the Tuscan painter and architect Giorgio Vasari in his classic book Lives of the Artists , published in 1550. (1) Vasari was only eight years old when Leonardo died, but he gathered information about the master from many artists who had known him and remembered him well, most notably Leonardo's close friend and disciple Francesco Melzi. An acquaintance of Leonardo, the surgeon and art collector Paolo Giovio, wrote a short eulogy, but it is unfinished and merely a page long. (2) Vasari's chapter, Life of Leonardo da Vinci, therefore, is as close as we can come to a contemporary account. Besides being an accomplished painter and architect, Vasari was a keen collector of drawings by famous masters and of stories about them. The idea of writing a book on the history of Italian art from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries was suggested to him by Giovio during a dinner party in Rome. (3) The book became a bestseller when it was first published, and its wide popular appeal has endured over the centuries due to the author's lively and colorful portraits, replete with charming anecdotes. Through a series of engaging stories about the lives of its greatest artists, Vasari's Lives conveyed the revolutionary nature of the Italian Renaissance. In spite of many inaccuracies and a tendency toward referring to legends and idolizing, Vasari's work remains the principal source for anyone interested in that period of European art and culture. QUALITIES AND APPEARANCE The opening paragraphs of Vasari's chapter on Leonardo are an emphatic declaration of the master's exceptional qualities and appearance: In the normal course of events ...

8220;Minutely researched, vividly written, and endlessly fascinating, The Science of Leonardo opens up a realm which has never been adequately appreciated.” —Dr. Oliver Sacks“Illuminating and impassioned . . . . A profound and clear exploration of Leonardo's scientific thought.”—The San Francisco Chronicle“A delight . . . . Lucid and spirited, it sparks a whole series of ideas and questions for further investigation.”—American Scientist“A fascinating glimpse of the road not taken by Western Science. Capra makes a compelling case that the science of the future may look a lot more like Leonardo's than Bacon's or Descartes -- a science of systems, non-reductive and akin to an art.” —Michael Pollan, author of Botany of Desire and Omnivore's Dilemma“Vivid and compelling. . . . Leonardo himself would have nodded in approval of this book, because for the first time it crystallizes the entire body of his work into a coherent, unified whole.” —Michio Kaku, author of Physics of the Impossible

Autorentext

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, which promotes ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education. Dr. Capra is the author of four international bestsellers, The Tao of Physics (1975), The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), and The Web of Life (1996). His most recent book, The Hidden Connections, was published in 2002.Capra has been the focus of over 50 television interviews, documentaries, and talk shows in Europe, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Japan, and has been featured in major international magazines and newspapers. He was the first subject of the BBC's new documentary series "Beautiful Minds" (2002).

Klappentext

Leonardo da Vinci's pioneering scientific work was virtually unknown during his lifetime. Acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Capra reveals that da Vinci was in many ways the unacknowledged "father of modern science."

Zusammenfassung
Leonardo da Vinci's scientific explorations were virtually unknown during his lifetime, despite their extraordinarily wide range. He studied the flight patterns of birds to create some of the first human flying machines; designed military weapons and defenses; studied optics, hydraulics, and the workings of the human circulatory system; and created designs for rebuilding Milan, employing principles still used by city planners today. Perhaps most importantly, Leonardo pioneered an empirical, systematic approach to the observation of nature-what is known today as the scientific method.Drawing on over 6,000 pages of Leonardo's surviving notebooks, acclaimed scientist and bestselling author Fritjof Capra reveals Leonardo's artistic approach to scientific knowledge and his organic and ecological worldview. In this fascinating portrait of a thinker centuries ahead of his time, Leonardo singularly emerges as the unacknowledged “father of modern science.”

Leseprobe
One
Infinite Grace

The earliest literary portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, and to me still the most moving, is that by the Tuscan painter and architect Giorgio Vasari in his classic book Lives of the Artists, published in 1550. (1) Vasari was only eight years old when Leonardo died, but he gathered information about the master from many artists who had known him and remembered him well, most notably Leonardo’s close friend and disciple Francesco Melzi. An acquaintance of Leonardo, the surgeon and art collector Paolo Giovio, wrote a short eulogy, but it is unfinished and merely a page long. (2) Vasari’s chapter, “Life of Leonardo da Vinci,” therefore, is as close as we can come to a contemporary account.

Besides being an accomplished painter and architect, Vasari was a keen collector of drawings by famous masters and of stories about them. The idea of writing a book on the history of Italian art from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries was suggested to him by Giovio during a dinner …