Leonardo da Vinci: Man, Alien or History's Greatest Genius?

SaveFeriss

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Having an interest in his art, and to some degree his inventions, I didn't know much of his work with cadaviers, and autopsy.

Hence I was suprised to learn in last nights ABC episode of Dangerous Liasions: Leonardo da Vinci.

His work with cadaviers was 3-4 centuries ahead of the world, and along with his inventions, were lost to the world until what he'd thought of had been exceeded.

What would history have been like, and how different could things have been if he was able to truly leave his mark on society?
He'd recognised cholestarol 400 years before anyone else.

He had designs for scuba gear, helicopters and submarines 3-400 years before anyone else.


Was this man the greatest human mind that ever lived? (that we know about)
 

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otaku

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#2
What makes him unique is the scope of his interests.

We have poeple who are as smart, if not smarter than icniV aD odranoeL but their area of expertise is much narrower.

His genius showed in so many different areas of interest - from devoloping flying machines to painting to human anatomy.
 

SaveFeriss

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It's the scope of his genius that I find fascinating, and means Im always discovering and being amazed, at his different interests.
 

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#4
SaveFeriss said:
Having an interest in his art, and to some degree his inventions, I didn't know much of his work with cadaviers, and autopsy.

Hence I was suprised to learn in last nights ABC episode of Dangerous Liasions: Leonardo da Vinci.

His work with cadaviers was 3-4 centuries ahead of the world, and along with his inventions, were lost to the world until what he'd thought of had been exceeded.

What would history have been like, and how different could things have been if he was able to truly leave his mark on society?
He'd recognised cholestarol 400 years before anyone else.

He had designs for scuba gear, helicopters and submarines 3-400 years before anyone else.


Was this man the greatest human mind that ever lived? (that we know about)
What came first? The chicken or the egg. While I agree he was ahead of his time one of the fascinating things to try and work out is ..were his designs looked at and copied making him great or were his designs the ONLY practical way to use them? e.g his flying man hasnt been developed but what it did was push the Wright Bros and Hargraeves along with a flying machine.

I agree looking over his material and knowing what he produced he certainly makes for a strong argument of the worlds greatest thinker..Apparently Isaac Newton was heading that way until he was visited by ..angels or aliens or a time traveller?...and spent 20 years devoted to God

Thomas Alva Edison invented quite a lot of things but greed was his motive( is that good or bad? )

One of the questions I ask myself is if time travel is possible are these great minds travellers stuck in the world they travelled to?
 

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Who can tell.. And on time travel.. It would be in the interests of the backward-time-traveller to keep their circumstances to themselves.

It's like:

If you knew everything, and knew exactly what was going to happen tomorrow, what would be the point of living?

There is nothing to discover, nothing new to experience.

An often overlooked fact when one considers the ideal of 'total knowledge'.
 

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#12
Yes,he certainly was a very impressive human being.From what I've read of histories great thinkers it would be he and Issaac Newton then daylight third.
 

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There certainly is something fascinating about Da Vinci- you kind of get the feeling that if he had unlimited finances/motivation/and lived to be 100, the world could be a very very different place today.

The only other person I think fits into that category is Tesla, whose experiments with electricity around 80 years ago are apparently still not entirely understood by the mainstream scientific community, and read like something straight out of a science-fiction book.
 

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#17
SaveFeriss said:
Any relation to the Tesla Coil in Red Alert: Command & Conquer?
Yeah, named for him.

Its hard to know how much of it is real and how much of it is internet urban myths, but from what I've read he did some pretty amazing experiments involving transmitting electricity directly through the earth, meaning he could do bizarre things like induce earthquakes and cook things several km away from him.


As I said, hard to know how much of the story was actually real, but it is possible that if he hadn't gone crazy and died early, electricity might be transmitted to houses directly rather than through the power lines.

On a more mundane scale, he certainly pioneered the generation and transmission of AC current generators, flouroescent lights, Tesla Coil transformers (without which you would not be using this computer), induction motors, radio and about 700 other patents. His final major work- wireless transmission of power fell through due to financial backers pulling out.

Its rather ironic that Thomas Edison is given so much credit, because next to Tesla he was a mental pygmy- except when it came to things like PR, marketing, and not going stark raving mad :)
 

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#19
edison was a brilliant inventor, however many of his inventions were actually invented by others, but patented by edison.

don't forget the breadth of work by aristotle who was the tome for medicine, philisophy, chemistry, physics, etc for over 1500 years (although most of it was wrong, it was pretty good for its time), hypocrites was the basis for medicine for along with aristotle for about 1800 years.

newton, surely third behind da vinci and the greatest physicist of all time Einstein, who like newton, invented a whole new branch of mathematics.

Old darwin was a master theoretician that brought the christian world to its knees.

A few others come to mind, but there are more than a few.
 

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#20
Mead said:
Yeah, named for him.

Its hard to know how much of it is real and how much of it is internet urban myths, but from what I've read he did some pretty amazing experiments involving transmitting electricity directly through the earth, meaning he could do bizarre things like induce earthquakes and cook things several km away from him.


As I said, hard to know how much of the story was actually real, but it is possible that if he hadn't gone crazy and died early, electricity might be transmitted to houses directly rather than through the power lines.

On a more mundane scale, he certainly pioneered the generation and transmission of AC current generators, flouroescent lights, Tesla Coil transformers (without which you would not be using this computer), induction motors, radio and about 700 other patents. His final major work- wireless transmission of power fell through due to financial backers pulling out.

Its rather ironic that Thomas Edison is given so much credit, because next to Tesla he was a mental pygmy- except when it came to things like PR, marketing, and not going stark raving mad :)

There's a great story about Telsa going to a bridge in Omsk Russia, running electricity through certain points and applying pressure on others, and damn near bringing it down. Absolute Genius.
 

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#21
SaveFeriss said:
Was this man the greatest human mind that ever lived? (that we know about)




That little word "ever" bothers me. Whilst I note the parenthetical comment, several others are making reference to "ever". The kids do this on BigFooty. They'll discuss the best or worst song ever written for example. All the replies refer to songs written in the last decade or so. Now I don't know for how many millions of years people have been interested in music but it is obvious that the standard couldn't have dropped off so dramatically in modern times.

If you follow my drift, one can only wonder about what and who went before recorded history.

At the risk of getting off the subject I (limited education) shall be pleased if some of you obviously well read people might like to comment on my little notion.
 

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#23
IMO Da Vinci is up there with the greatest minds of all time. If not the greatest then top 5 certainly.

My top 5, if anyone cares, and in no particular order, is: Da Vinci, Einstein, Archimedes, Gauss, Newton
 

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#25
Grendel said:
On what's speculated as the best guesstimate, a bloke called William Sidis
http://www.quantonics.com/The_Prodigy_Review.html (for a brief overview of his life) was thought to have been probably the smartest (or certainly the highest) I.Q known.
Once again to be pedantic I will have to say that an IQ test while relevant for all those born after the 1920s it makes it hard to calculate those who came before. To me IQ is about memorising standard tests as you go along...I consider myself fairly intelligent and my IQ tests at 130 but get me to look under a bonnet and I am screwed. Get me to build a bookcase sorry amigo stack the books on the floor..to me intelligence is that ability to capture different ideas from different groups of people and to re-use them to produce a third idea altogether and thats something DaVinci had..he also had the ability to think clearly and develop concepts.

As I said I feel I am intelligent and can think random thoughts and ideas but to make great leaps? Maybe but dont have the facility or ambition to put them down.
 
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