Leonardo

"Art is never finished, only abandoned. "

says Leonardo da Vinci. I heard Fritjof Capra speak about his latest book "The Science of Leonardo" and I'd say I consider both of them, Fritjof and Leonardo, accepted in my club of heroes. 

In the presentation I learned that Leonardo was left handed, wrote from the right to the left side on the pages in his many sketch books - in mirrored letters, just so that he wouldn't get bored.

He was also vegetarian - I am guessing there were not too many vegetarians by choice 500 years ago. He loved animals so much and he didn't want to hurt them, so he wouldn't eat them. When he was asked, how he knew that plants wouldn't feel pain too, he even came up with an evolutionary theory.  He would argue that animals move, so they could bump into things, and therefore they would be able to feel pain, as a way of navigating safely through the world. Plants on the other hand, are stationary, so wouldn't require pain sensors.

Leonardo filled thousands of pages with concepts, drawings, experiments related to the natural world, which Fritjof Capra studied and he concludes: "Only now, five centuries later, as the limits of the Newtonian science are becoming all too apparent and the mechanistic Cartesian worldview is giving way to a holistic and ecological view not unlike Leonardo's, can we begin to appreciate the full power of his science and its great relevance for our modern era.

Fritjof Capra at Symbiosis in Yosemite

I am definitely inspired to read his book.

For more, check out this link.