Unit 4 Text B
Leonardo da Vinci: Far More Than a Great Artist
A) Leonardo was and is best known as an artist, the creator of such masterpieces as Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks, and The Last Supper. Yet Leonardo was far more than a great artist: he had one of the best scientific minds of his time and bridged the gap between the shockingly unscientific medieval methods and our own trusty modern approach. His experiments in anatomy and the study of fluids, for example, absolutely blew away the accomplishments of his predecessors. Beginning with his first stay in Milan, Leonardo became more and more absorbed in his scientific investigations. The range of topics that came under his inquiry is amazing: anatomy, zoology, botany, geology, optics, aerodynamics and hydrodynamics among others.
B) While greatly influenced by the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Leonardo, unlike many of his contemporaries, saw the limitations of seeking the truth only in those writings of the Bible. Instead, he took the startling approach of actually observing nature and asking misleadingly simple scientific questions like, “How do birds fly?” To finish the bill, he then systematically recorded their solutions in his sketches.
C) Leonardo certainly had a mysterious ability to observe nature and record it. And to this he added an unusual, even sinister determination. The first biographer of Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Giovi, wrote in 1520: “ in the medical faculty he learned to dissect the cadavers of criminals under inhuman, disgusting conditions...because he wanted [to examine and] to draw the different deflections and reflections of limbs and their dependence upon the nerves and the joints. This is why he paid attention to the forms of even very small organs, capillaries and hidden parts of the skeleton.”
D) In a study of cervical vertebra shown from different perspectives, Leonardo notes: “[Both] former and contemporary authors have produced written reports [about anatomy] in tormentingly long-winded and confused styles. However, through a simple and clear description from different perspectives, things are described definitively; and to avoid that my gift to mankind could be lost [to time], I teach the technique of reproducing things by printing.” These comments foresaw the birth of a new method of scientific study: the systematic, descriptive method of the natural sciences, which was the major method of scientific study well into the 19th century.
E) As his curiosity took him in ever wider directions, Leonardo always used this method of scientific inquiry: close observation, repeated testing of the observation, precise illustration of the subject object or phenomenon with brief explanatory notes. The result was volumes of remarkable notes on an amazing variety of topics, from the nature of the sun, moon and stars to the formation of fossils and, perhaps most notably, the mysteries of flight.
F) Artists have always found it difficult to make a living off their art. Even a master like Leonardo was forced to sell out in order to support himself, so he adapted his drawing skills to the more profitable fields of architecture, military engineering, canal building and weapons design. Although against war at heart, Leonardo landed a job working for the Duke of Milan by calling himself a military engineer and outlining some of his sinister ideas for weapons and fortifications. Like many art school types in search of a salary, he only briefly mentioned to the Duke that he could paint as well.
G) Lucky for Leonardo, he was actually really talented as an engineer. Good illustrators were a dime a dozen in Renaissance Italy, but Leonardo had the brains and the diligence to break new ground, usually leaving his contemporaries in the dust. Like many eccentric geniuses, Leonardo wanted to create “new machines” for a “new world”.
H) Throughout his life he had brilliant and far-out ideas, ranging from the practical to the prophetic. As military engineer and architect to the notorious Cesare Borgia (son of the Pope!), Leonardo proposed creating a dry route across the Gulf of Istanbul, connecting the Golden Horn and the Bosporus with a bridge. Alas, like most great ideas, the bridge plan was squelched by those disappointing engineers, who became mad when they found out how big it was supposed to be. Leonardo watchers got the last laugh, though, because modern engineers have determined that the bridge would have been completely sound. Furthermore, they show its construction would have been entirely reasonable, proving yet again that Leonardo was the smartest man ever.
I) Nearly a century before Galileo, Leonardo disagreed with the challenge of measuring time. For him, the most interesting part was the use of mechanical equipment, and he studied them with great enjoyment. Based on the gear, he came up with loads of different thingamajigs, including the bicycle, a helicopter, an “automobile”, and some horrible weapons of course.
J) What interested him most, however, was water. Recall that nobody had controlled electricity yet, so water was at that point the ultimate source for power. Leonardo studied all forms of water---liquid, steam, and ice---and he had all sorts of excellent ideas of what to do with it. He cooked up plans for a device to measure humidity, a steam-powered cannon, many different waterwheels, and oodles of useful industrial machines powered by flowing water. He also devised some highly ambitious plans to revitalize Milan with canals, which he intended to implement with some equally ambitious construction of machines. In fact, once he started on the subject of water he couldn’t really stop, forever envisioning things like floating snowshoes to walk on water, breathing devices (including a diving hood) and webbed gloves to explore underwater,a life preserver to remain afloat, devices to attack and sink ships from underwater, and an “unsinkable” double-hulled ship and dredges for clearing harbors
and channels.
S1. Painting was not a profitable job in Leonardo’s time.
S2. Based on his talents and hard work, Leonardo made new discoveries and surpassed other scientists at that time.
S3. Besides being known as an artist, Leonardo was also a scientist investigating a large range of fields.
S4. Compared with other investigators, Leonardo could describe his study from different angles simply and clearly.
S5. The way Leonardo tried to find out truth was from the observation of the nature instead of from the ancient writings.
S6. The research methods Leonardo used for natural science laid the foundation for the modern ways of scientific research.
S7. Leonardo tried to exam the relationships of different parts of our body by anatomy.
S8. Leonardo was imaginative in designing different devices used in the water.
S9. The bridge Leonardo once designed was quite huge but was proved to be safe and reasonable by modern engineers.
S10. Leonardo’s doubts for the measurement of time were almost 100 years earlier than Galileo.
答案：S1-5: F, G, A, D, B S6-10: D, C, J, H, I