
What a posthumous brain scan reveals about Leonardo Da Vinci's creativity? - webmasterraj
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/17/leonardos-brain-leonard-shlain/
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danharaj
I cannot say anything about the concrete assertions the author makes. He's
using artful language to say a scientific thing; a scientific thing that
cannot be verified. What I can say is that I see a theme: A theme of unity
opposed to distinction. In a world where experts are specialized, people are
atomized into rational actors, inquiry cut up into disciplines and schools,
classes stratified into hierarchy, the Earth parceled out into privacies, and
the most lauded brains in the world the most bifurcated, Da Vinci's life and
mind must be unintelligible.

His brain was mixed up; his life was mixed up. Where Da Vinci ended and the
world began was no where to be found. His interests saw no division, his
talents no distinction. He degraded himself, rolled in the dirt, put his roots
there and grew taller than the ivory tower. He without lineage outgrew any
line; he came from the tenebrous muck of the world and left for the heavens.

~~~
darkmighty
Maybe you're exaggerating a bit on specialization? Unless humans reach
immortality (or you live alone in a world), there's no other solution for
progress. Most modern specialists out there actually know superficially a
broad number of fields (and any of them likely much better than Da Vinci ever
knew), but must specialize in one to optimize progress. There's only so much
time to reach the frontier of progress, and you need to be at least reasonably
quick to get there, lest your work be made obsolete by others before it's even
published.

I don't think any expert should be unhappy for "missing out on knowledge" of
many fields, because knowledge is infinite -- he should instead be happy to
know the _essential_ knowledge of some fields and be able to expand the
frontier of human knowledge, which I believe is more satisfying than just
soaking up results of all is out there (and probably can pay your lunch).

In popular words, "Jack of all trades, master of none" (unless you're in the
middle ages).

~~~
danharaj
The segregation of knowledgeable people into sets of experts based on domains
of expertise is more the problem than individuals specializing. People will
doggedly pursue answers to their questions without such rigid social
structures, but it prevents the interaction between people that would
otherwise fruitfully cooperate together. These structures, I believe, mostly
serve political and bureaucratic functions rather than the facilitation of
human inquiry. We like to pretend our institutions are optimized for their
ends, but usually they're optimized for the allocation of resources and power.
Cutting people up into experts, giving them titles, making them clique
together, impairs them but it makes them 'easier to manage'.

~~~
darkmighty
Ah now I can see a more valid point. The problem is not so much that people
specialize in certain problems/'issues'/fields/tools/..., it's more that the
fields are arbitrarily drawn and rigid. That I can agree with.

"People will doggedly pursue answers to their questions without such rigid
social structures" \-- that is a good observation imo, and I think science
progresses best when it is oriented around problems. The specialization then
comes as devoting large amounts of time to a deep understanding of the problem
and the different tools necessary to get it solved. But perhaps it's only
natural (or human nature) to split tools into categories to study them
separately and effectively, and be able to draw upon people who know those
tools very well.

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SCAQTony
Leonardo da Vinci was not a pacifist (second paragraph). As linked here on
Hacker News, he designed weapons of war and bragged how great they would work,
He was essentially an "arms dealer."

In his words:

"...I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it
were founded on a rock, etc. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient
and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a
storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his
great detriment and confusion. ..."

[http://www.theladders.com/career-newsletters/leonardo-da-
vin...](http://www.theladders.com/career-newsletters/leonardo-da-vinci-resume)

~~~
justinhj
He was opposed to war but made war machines to pay the bills. Besides there's
a certain logic to avoiding war by being more heavily armed than your
neighbours.

~~~
Caprinicus
Without nukes the cold war would have probably been significantly warmer

~~~
digi_owl
Or never gotten off the ground in the first place...

~~~
douche
Because Stalin wouldn't have stopped at the Elbe, but pushed on to the Bay of
Biscay?

~~~
digi_owl
By the time the bomb was tested, Nazi Germany had already surrendered (VE Day,
May 8. Trinity test, July 16). And Stalin had already agreed to get involved
in Asia.

If he wanted to go all the way to the Atlantic, why did he stop at Elbe and
spend time negotiating at Potsdam.

------
unimpressive
>Outside of the prohibitively expensive alternative of private tutors,
admission to one of these schools was the only means to learning the secret
code that opened the doors of opportunity.

Mathematics is built around a similar sort of cipher. Even learning from
textbooks is not enough to truly penetrate the collective knowledge stored in
the symbols of math. The symbols change from sub field to sub field and in a
certain sense encrypt the knowledge from one who has not read all preceding
papers.

It makes me wonder if one could perform some sort of cryptanalysis on these
documents as a method of understanding.

~~~
danharaj
I did Math in undergrad. I hung out with grads and profs a lot, and of course
the bright undergrads who would become the grads and profs who apprehended
mathematical concepts far quicker than I ever could. It became clear to me
partway through my freshman year that mathematics is an extremely social
activity. The books are gappy, the exercises are more open ended than you'd
think for something that has a single answer, the lectures are best when they
are conversations, and the best place to learn something is at the chalkboard
with a cup of tea in hand as someone scratches out a diagram composed of all
intuition and no logic that makes you go "aha!"

I think all barriers of language are social barriers.

~~~
superuser2
>It became clear to me partway through my freshman year that mathematics is an
extremely social activity.

I think many fields are like this, and the "dream" of ending selective
residential colleges (which are designed to facilitate this kind of social
study) in favor of MOOCs may not be so idyllic.

~~~
danharaj
Definitely, definitely. The idea that individuals achieve through individual
means individual rewards does not explain any of my experiences with any of my
activities-- especially the ones I get paid for.

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tim333
Bit of a click bait title. What some guy imagines a brain scan on Leonardo
would have looked like seems closer.

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carlob
I thought this left/right brain stuff was considered pseudoscience at best.
Granted, there is more to this article, but I find it somewhat hard to take
seriously.

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nwatson
Who else thinks the "Mona Lisa" painting is crap? It's always been overrated,
and seeing it live did nothing to change my impression. Not to disparage da
Vinci's corpus ... but just sayin'.

~~~
imagex
Understanding the context of art is frequently as important as direct
experience. Jackson Pollack has been decried as an alcoholic fraud by some,
but like Da Vinci, it is the techniques he pioneered as much as his works that
are fascinating. There was a study that claimed he (Pollock) represented
fractals, even Chaos theory in some of this work.
[http://phys.unsw.edu.au/phys_about/PHYSICS!/FRACTAL_EXPRESSI...](http://phys.unsw.edu.au/phys_about/PHYSICS!/FRACTAL_EXPRESSIONISM/fractal_taylor.html)

On a tangent, this is the soundtrack to the eponymous movie, Pollock by
composer Jeff Beal. Give it a listen, while taking a look at some of Pollock's
catalog:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD0nFjjUCQo&list=RDoD0nFjjUC...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD0nFjjUCQo&list=RDoD0nFjjUCQo)

Like nwatson, I wasn't moved the first time I saw Mona. But understanding her
history brought her to life the next time we met.

~~~
douche
> Jackson Pollack has been decried as an alcoholic fraud by some, but like Da
> Vinci, it is the techniques he pioneered as much as his works that are
> fascinating

Throwing paint at the wall like a baby projectile-vomitting rainbow-colored
Gerber puree'd carrots?

