The Most Interested Person Of All Time
The Most Interested Person Of All Time
There was once a man who, five hundred years ago, figured out that birds wings flap up at a different speed to which they flap down. But he was no zoologist.
He mapped out the dental structure of humans. But never practiced dentistry.
He devised an experiment with a bull’s heart and wax to determine how blood flowed in the heart. But he never treated a patient.
He discovered friction, plus some of Newton’s Laws two hundred years ahead of time, but didn’t publish scientific findings at all.
He designed flying machines, crossbows, and other feats of engineering. Few, if any of them, were ever built.
He designed an ideal city. He made early observations of gravity. He dissected thirty human corpses over the course of his lifetime to study anatomy, but never practiced medicine. He measured hundreds of ratios in the human body, for the hell of it.
He kept more than 7,200 pages of scribbles and notes (that we know of), with instructions to himself to ask people about things, or to “study the tongue of the woodpecker”.
He also painted, and was famous for blurring lines and outlines in his paintings, with a technique called sfumato. His curiosity led him to see that all things are connected, and so this is how he painted the world. Whilst painting the world, he painted the most famous smile of all time — rejecting clients rich and powerful whilst instead agreeing to paint a silk merchant’s wife called Lisa.
He lacked formal education, as he was an illegitimate son. He was taught little, and was not a great reader. Yet he learnt and canvassed so much. But how?
His Name Was Leonardo Da Vinci.
He was the most interested person of all time.
To understand gravity and human anatomy, you must first write a note to yourself to study the tongue of a woodpecker.
It’s time to start Opening Doors — all the Doors that interest you.
