Abstract

MANSILLA, Ricardo. The ideas of complexity in the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Inter disciplina [online]. 2020, vol.8, n.21, pp.75-88.  Epub Aug 14, 2020. ISSN 2448-5705.  https://doi.org/10.22201/ceiich.24485705e.2020.21.75148.

One of the most notable members of our civilization throughout its history is undoubtedly Leonardo da Vinci. He was a painter, engineer, musician, scientist, sculptor and organizer of superb celebrations among many other vocations. After his death, in 1519, his work languished in the dark until the end of the 18th century. Only then, in full Enlightenment, his reputation as a scientist and engineer matched his extraordinary prestige as a painter, showing his accentuated interdisciplinary foundation. To achieve the deep realism we observe in his artistic works, Leonardo undertook careful geological, biological and anatomical studies. To document these scientific studies, he used in his codex’s beautiful drawings of high artistic quality. This is the virtuous circle of Leonardo’s interdisciplinary work: science to raise the quality of artistic work, art to document scientific work.

Although we conceive the ideas of complexity as a scion of the second half of the twentieth century, driven in its development by the resounding progress of digital computers, which in the words of H. Pagels are the foundational instrument of the homonymous theory, it can be observed glimpses of the essential ideas of this doctrinal body in thinkers settled in previous centuries. Such is the case of Leonardo. This work tries to show how the cardinal ideas of the theory of complex systems are glimpsed in Leonardian codices.

Keywords : Leonardo da Vinci; complex systems theory.

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