Part One:
‘Geniuses’ with clay feet?
‘Geniuses’ with clay feet?
by
“Da
Vinci is universally hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of all time. He is
celebrated for his art, inventions, science, and being multi-talented.
Leonardo
da Vinci is the most overrated genius of all time mainly because of the many
outlandish claims made about how much of a genius he was”.
Introduction
By way of
complete contrast with the standard assessment of the so-often compared
Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci, that goes along lines such as this (https://www.createspace.com/4430132):
Archimedes and Leonardo Da Vinci: The Greatest Geniuses of Antiquity and
the Renaissance
Authored by Charles River
Editors
….
“Give me a place to stand, and I
shall move the world.’"– Archimedes
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” – Leonardo
Over 1500 years before Leonardo Da Vinci became the Renaissance Man, antiquity had its own in the form of Archimedes, one of the most famous Ancient Greeks. An engineer, mathematician, physicist, scientist and astronomer all rolled into one, Archimedes has been credited for making groundbreaking discoveries, some of which are undoubtedly fact and others that are almost certainly myth. Regardless, he’s considered the first man to determine a way to measure an object’s mass, and also the first man to realize that refracting the Sun’s light could burn something, theorizing the existence of lasers over two millennia before they existed. People still use the design of the Archimedes screw in water pumps today, and modern scholars have tried to link him to the recently discovered Antikythera mechanism, an ancient “computer” of sorts that used mechanics to accurately chart astronomical data depending on the date it was set to.
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” – Leonardo
Over 1500 years before Leonardo Da Vinci became the Renaissance Man, antiquity had its own in the form of Archimedes, one of the most famous Ancient Greeks. An engineer, mathematician, physicist, scientist and astronomer all rolled into one, Archimedes has been credited for making groundbreaking discoveries, some of which are undoubtedly fact and others that are almost certainly myth. Regardless, he’s considered the first man to determine a way to measure an object’s mass, and also the first man to realize that refracting the Sun’s light could burn something, theorizing the existence of lasers over two millennia before they existed. People still use the design of the Archimedes screw in water pumps today, and modern scholars have tried to link him to the recently discovered Antikythera mechanism, an ancient “computer” of sorts that used mechanics to accurately chart astronomical data depending on the date it was set to.
It has long been difficult to separate fact from legend in the story of Archimedes’ life, from his death to his legendary discovery of how to differentiate gold from fool’s gold, but many of his works survived antiquity, and many others were quoted by other ancient writers. As a result, even while his life and death remain topics of debate, his writings and measurements are factually established and well known, and they range on everything from measuring an object’s density to measuring circles and parabolas.
is the following
cheeky view, which ranks Leonardo da Vinci as the most over-rated of geniuses (https://itsnobody.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/the-top-10-most-overrated-geniuses/):
….
The Top 10 Most Overrated “Geniuses”
….
Here is
my top 10 list of the most overrated geniuses. The rankings are based upon how
overrated the “geniuses” starting from the lesser overrated geniuses ending
with the most overrated genius.
#10 –
Bill Gates
….
#9 –
James D. Watson
….
#8 –
Michio Kaku
….
#7 –
Stephen Hawking
….
#6 –
William James Sidis
….
#5 –
Benjamin Franklin
….
#4 –
Thomas Edison
….
#3 –
Albert Einstein
….
Damien
Mackey’s comment: On
Einstein, see also my series of articles:
“Anxious theologians scan the latest scientific theories
to see if they do or do not support the existence of God. Grave scientists
issue their pontifical pronouncements. Sir James Jeans tells us that God is a
great mathematician; Einstein says ‘God is slick but not mean’; Laplace,
answering Napoleon who taxed him with not mentioning God in his Mécanique
Céleste, said: ‘I have no need of that hypothesis’.”
GAVIN ARDLEY, Aquinas and Kant
"Difficulties of a common sense and philosophical
nature are frequently encountered in the acceptance of fundamentally new
principles of physics, as e.g. on the introduction of relativity and quantum
theories. These difficulties should not be experienced henceforth when it is
realised that, in spite of misleading terms, the physical principles are not
about the real world which we know so well. The physicist should become more
conscious of the power he possesses to mould his subject when he is fully aware
of his autonomy".
Now,
continuing with the count-down of supposed geniuses we arrive at no. 2:
#2 –
Pythagoras of Samos
Damien
Mackey’s comment: On Pythagoras,
see my articles:
Continuing
with the count-down of supposed geniuses we arrive at no. 1:
#1
– Leonardo da Vinci
So
who’s the most super-overrated genius of all time? It’s Leonardo da Vinci.
Da
Vinci is universally hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of all time. He is
celebrated for his art, inventions, science, and being multi-talented.
Leonardo
da Vinci is the most overrated genius of all time mainly because of the many
outlandish claims made about how much of a genius he was.
Many
different sources have “estimated” Da Vinci’s IQ to be over 200. This however
is quite impossible. It’s literally impossible that Da Vinci had an IQ of 200+.
Whenever asked for legitimate reasons as to how Da Vinci could of [sic] had an
IQ of 200+ people will usually respond with an appeal to authority saying
something like “this expert said so” or “this person said so”.
Da
Vinci himself said “Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority
is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory”.
In
order to correctly estimate IQ you have to estimate how well someone would be
able to answer the most difficult IQ-style questions.
I know
that Da Vinci’s IQ would not be any higher than 160 based on some simple
observations:
– At
least half of Da Vinci’s inventions failed when tested, this does not show high
IQ at all
– Da Vinci tried to learn mathematics but didn’t really get very far
– Da Vinci was not a super-fast learner (the main sign of high IQ)
– Da Vinci’s works do not require a high IQ
– Da Vinci tried to learn mathematics but didn’t really get very far
– Da Vinci was not a super-fast learner (the main sign of high IQ)
– Da Vinci’s works do not require a high IQ
Nothing
Da Vinci did demonstrates that he had an IQ of 200 or higher or even close to
that. Da Vinci is so overrated that people think his IQ was higher than
Newton’s. But how could that be possible? Newton did things like solving the brachistochrone problem in a few hours, but what did Leonardo da Vinci do
to demonstrate his intelligence? I would be surprised if Da Vinci had an IQ
higher than 140.
Da
Vinci’s inventions have also been grossly exaggerated. Da Vinci drew drawings
and different people have personally interpreted some of the same drawings to
mean different things. This has been the case with Da Vinci’s supposed
calculator. Objectors once again claim this device wouldn’t actually work and
isn’t actually a drawing of a calculator, but people personally interpret it to
be so.
This
is also the case with Da Vinci’s supposed helicopter. It’s not really a
helicopter, it’s just an aerial screw. Helicopters are closer to Chinese bamboo
toys than they are to Da Vinci’s sketches. The media and others simply overrated
Da Vinci so much they decided to call it a helicopter (some how).
Da
Vinci never actually built or tested most of his inventions and at least half
of them failed when tested. The vast majority of the models of Da Vinci’s
designs that really do work are modified versions of Da Vinci’s designs or
strange interpretations of what Da Vinci’s designs mean. In order to get most
of Da Vinci’s designs to work modifications are necessary.
The
more people test out Da Vinci’s designs the more people find that his designs
don’t work. What’s genius about coming up with failed designs? Basically anyone
who has artistic talent, an IQ of 130 or higher, and spends all their time
focusing on inventing new machines would be able to come up with lots of
inventions (and having half of them fail).
Da
Vinci being far ahead of his time is also an exaggerated claim. Da Vinci was
born in the year 1452 AD, not the year 287 BC like Archimedes. Basically
everything Da Vinci had done had been independently re-discovered without much
effort by others within 200 years or less or had been done prior to Da Vinci.
Since at least half of Da Vinci’s designs didn’t work I’m not sure how much it
would have mattered if Da Vinci’s writings had been discovered much earlier.
During Da Vinci’s time being ahead of your time didn’t take much.
Al-Jazari
for instance pre-dates Da Vinci by more than 200 years, he invented one of the
first programmable analog computers, camshaft, segmented gears, and more. His
book is much more detailed than Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, all of his
designs work, and even though he pre-dates Da Vinci he is completely ignored in
the media.
[End of quote]
This rater of genius does not question Archimedes, however, here considered
to have been an ancient “super-genius”: “Or what about the super-genius
engineer and mathematician Archimedes, who pre-dates Da Vinci by more than 1600
years. He is also ignored in the media”.
However, I have had cause to question the very historicity of this Archimedes,
about whom so very little is really known. I have gone so far to suggest, in my
article:
King Hezekiah and the
strong Fort of Lachish. Part Two: Akhi-miti’s short tenure
that ‘Archimedes’ may actually have arisen from a person of earlier ancient
history (c. 700 BC), Akhimiti (the
biblical high priest, Eliakim), who survived several sieges by the Assyrians. Moreover,
the water screw invention, falsely attributed to Archimedes, was already known
to the Assyrians of the very era of Akhimiti.
Thus I wrote:
Archimedes
Did the Greeks appropriate the
C8th BC official, Akhi-miti, and re-cast him as Archimedes, about
whom “… very little is known about the early life of Archimedes
or his family”? http://archimedespalimpsest.org/about/history/archimedes.php
- and, about whom there are “… many fantastic tales
surrounding the life of Archimedes”.
Given that Stephanie Dalley
has now proved that the water screw, thought to have been invented by
Archimedes, was in use as early as the time of King Sennacherib of Assyria
(“Sennacherib, Archimedes, and the Water Screw”: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/40151),
we have to be very doubtful, I think, of the historical reality of this
Archimedes.
Famed for his supposedly
having held off the besieging Romans, this may be just another of the many
legends that have arisen from the historical dramas at the time of King
Hezekiah of Judah, at both of which Eliakim (= Akhi-miti?) was present:
namely Sennacherib’s aborted siege of Jerusalem, and the later siege by the
Assyrian army as recorded in the Book of Judith.
[End of quote]
If my estimation of Archimedes is
correct, then this would make ‘him’ a most unsuitable model for comparison with
Leonardo da Vinci, whether the latter be considered genius or not.
Part Two:
“Over 1500 years
before Leonardo Da Vinci became the Renaissance Man, antiquity had its own in
the form of Archimedes, one of the most famous Ancient Greeks”.
If Leonardo da
Vinci has been modelled to some degree upon a possibly fictitious Archimedes
(refer back to Part One), then how
much of what we have about Leonardo is truly reliable?
Or, to put it
another way, we might ask: What is the real Da Vinci Code?
The two names,
Archimedes and Leonardo, are constantly found mentioned together.
For instance, there
is this article, “Archimedes and Leonardo Da Vinci: The Greatest Geniuses of
Antiquity and the Renaissance” (https://www.createspace.com/4430132):
Authored by Charles River
Editors
….
“Give
me a place to stand, and I shall move the world.’"– Archimedes
“Iron
rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes
frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” – Leonardo
Over
1500 years before Leonardo Da Vinci became the Renaissance Man, antiquity had
its own in the form of Archimedes, one of the most famous Ancient Greeks. An
engineer, mathematician, physicist, scientist and astronomer all rolled into
one, Archimedes has been credited for making groundbreaking discoveries, some
of which are undoubtedly fact and others that are almost certainly myth.
Regardless, he’s considered the first man to determine a way to measure an
object’s mass, and also the first man to realize that refracting the Sun’s
light could burn something, theorizing the existence of lasers over two
millennia before they existed. People still use the design of the Archimedes
screw in water pumps today, and modern scholars have tried to link him to the
recently discovered Antikythera mechanism, an ancient “computer” of sorts that
used mechanics to accurately chart astronomical data depending on the date it
was set to.
It has long been difficult to separate fact from legend in the story of Archimedes’ life, from his death to his legendary discovery of how to differentiate gold from fool’s gold, but many of his works survived antiquity, and many others were quoted by other ancient writers. As a result, even while his life and death remain topics of debate, his writings and measurements are factually established and well known, and they range on everything from measuring an object’s density to measuring circles and parabolas.
The Renaissance spawned the use of the label “Renaissance Man” to describe a person who is extremely talented in multiple fields, and no discussion of the Renaissance is complete without the original “Renaissance Man”, Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, if 100 people are asked to describe Leonardo in one word, they might give 100 answers. As the world’s most famous polymath and genius, Leonardo found time to be a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer.
It would be hard to determine which field Leonardo had the greatest influence in. His “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper” are among the most famous paintings of all time, standing up against even Michelangelo’s work. But even if he was not the age’s greatest artist, Leonardo may have conducted his most influential work was done in other fields. His emphasis on the importance of Nature would influence Enlightened philosophers centuries later, and he sketched speculative designs for gadgets like helicopters that would take another 4 centuries to create. Leonardo’s vision and philosophy were made possible by his astounding work as a mathematician, engineer and scientist. At a time when much of science was dictated by Church teachings, Leonardo studied geology and anatomy long before they truly even became scientific fields, and he used his incredible artistic abilities to sketch the famous Vitruvian Man, linking art and science together.
[End of quote]
Then there is this
one by D. L. Simms, “Archimedes' Weapons of War and Leonardo” (BJHS, 1988,
21, pp. 195-210): https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0007087400024766
INTRODUCTION
Leonardo's
fascination with Archimedes as well as with his mathematics is well known.
There
are three fairly extensive and eccentric comments in the surviving notebooks:
on
his military inventions; on his part in an Anglo-Spanish conflict and on his
activities,
death
and burial at the siege of Syracuse. Reti has examined the first of the three,
that
about
the Architronito or steam cannon, mainly considering the origin of the
idea for
the
cannon and its attribution to Archimedes, but with comments on the later
influence
of
Leonardo's ideas. Marshall Clagett has produced the most comprehensive attempt
to
try to identify Leonardo's sources for the third. ….
Reti's
analysis can be supplemented and extended in the light of more recent comments
and
Sakas' experimental demonstration of a miniature working model, and
Clagett's
proposed sources modified. The origins of the other reference, Leonardo's
belief
that Archimedes played a part in an Anglo-Spanish war, can also be rendered
slightly
less baffling. Any conclusions must necessarily be tentative given the
generally
accepted
opinion that much less than half of Leonardo's manuscripts survive. ….
ARCHITRONITO
Leonardo's
earliest surviving mention (late 1480s-1490) of Archimedes' weapons of
war
is perhaps the most startling (Ms.B 33r): ….
Architronito.
Gunsight. Ensure that the rod en is placed over the centre of the table fixed
beneath
so that the water can fall with a single shot on to this table.
The Architronito
is a machine of fine copper, an invention of Archimedes, and it throws
iron
balls with great noise and violence. It is used in this manner:—the third part
of the
instrument
stands within a great quantity of burning coals and when it has been brought to
white heat you turn the screw d, which is above the cistern of water abc, at
the same time that you turn the screw below the cistern and all the water it
contains will descend into the white hot part of the barrel. There it will
instantly become transformed into so much steam that it will seem astonishing,
and especially when one notes with what force and hears the roar that it will
produce. This machine has driven a ball weighing one talent six stadia.
….
Origins
of the attribution
Reti
demonstrated that Leonardo's source of the idea for this weapon was the
drawings
of
cannons in De Re Militari by Valturius, who stated that the cannon had
been
invented—ut
putatur—by Archimedes. ….
[End of quote]
And here is another one,
with an interesting question posed at the end of it (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/159447):
In 1499 Leonardo di Vinci is hired by Cesare Borgia as a military
engineer. He begins to work on a steam canon that had originally been an idea
of Archimedes 1500 years earlier. Leonardo tells Cesare the story of Archimedes
and how he made many discoveries in mathematics and science.
Archimedes visits Alexandria and falls in love with Princess Helena,
and in spite of their age difference, they marry and return to Syracuse. Soon
Helena gives birth to their only child, a daughter they name Arsinoe.
For nearly fifty years of peace, Syracuse is drawn into the war between
Rome and Carthage. Archimedes must use all his vast knowledge to defend
Syracuse and his very family.
Cesare offers to purchase the chest of ideas from Leonardo but he declines the offer. Who knows which of Leonardo de Vinci’s inventions were really the brainchild of Archimedes of Syracuse?
Cesare offers to purchase the chest of ideas from Leonardo but he declines the offer. Who knows which of Leonardo de Vinci’s inventions were really the brainchild of Archimedes of Syracuse?
[End of quote]
Yes, indeed, who knows just how much of
what is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci really belonged to Archimedes - a possibly
fictitious character, anyway? Or was borrowed from an even earlier period of
history, such as the neo-Assyrian era of c. 700 BC, when Archimedes’ supposed
Screw Pump was already in effective use by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib?
What is the real Da Vinci Code?
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