event 2 blog | susana esqueda, desma9

 Event Blog 2

For my second event blog, I decided to attend the online event “Leonardo da Vinci on Visualizing the Forces of Nature: Gravity” in which Claire Farago and Matthew Landrus discuss Da Vinci’s writings and how they encapsulate scientific concepts such as gravity by visualizing them. Ultimately they argued that Da Vinci had a grasp on the theory of gravity two hundred years before Newton, “realizing more than his predecessors or contemporaries managed to do” (Nature.com). Through the experiments he wrote down in his journals, Farago and Landrus examined how Da Vinci was able to visually conceptualize this scientific theory through the usage of images, words, and ultimately, the entanglement of math, nature, and art. His experiments “modeled the gravitational constant to around 97 percent accuracy” (Caltech), a feat which is extraordinarily impressive. As Farago and Landrus discussed, Da Vinci was able to conceptualize and visualize these scientific concepts because he was a “close observer of nature” (Broad)—by observing the flight paths of birds in the wind, and the waves of the seas, Da Vinci was able to hypothesize a force which allowed for these instances to occur. 

I am really grateful to have been given the opportunity to learn about this since I never realized how fundamental Leonardo Da Vinci was in the scientific realm. Understanding how Da Vinci was able to perceive scientific concepts and theories through a visual medium—fostered by observation of nature—truly elucidates how deeply interconnected art, science, math, and nature are. I am deeply grateful to Farago and Landrus for opening up a space in which this information is accessible to be learned by us. Da Vinci had incredible breakthroughs underlain by an intrinsic connection between nature and art; his legacy is an antithesis to the schism between science and art. He was both artist and scientist, and all of his research stemmed from the intersection of these fields.

registration screenshot 

screenshot of event

screenshot of slides during event 

References List

Broad, William J. “A Doodle Reveals Da Vinci’s Early Deconstruction of Gravity.” The New York Times, 17 Feb. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/science/leonard-da-vinci-gravity.html. 

Kemp, Martin. “Leonardo Da Vinci’s Laboratory: Studies in Flow.” Nature News, 16 July 2019, www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02144-z. 

“Leonardo Da Vinci’s Forgotten Experiments Explored Gravity as a Form of Acceleration.” California Institute of Technology, www.caltech.edu/about/news/leonardo-da-vincis-forgotten-experiments-explored-gravity-as-a-form-of-acceleration. Accessed 19 May 2023.