We can readily believe the statements of Benvenuto Cellini, the
sixteenth-century Goldsmith, that Francis I. "did not believe
that any other man had come into the world who had attained so great a
knowledge as Leonardo, and that not only as sculptor, painter, and
architect, for beyond that he was a profound philosopher." It was
Cellini also who contended that "Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and
Raphael are the Book of the World."
Leonardo anticipated many eminent scientists and inventors in the
methods of investigation which they adopted to solve the many problems
with which their names are coupled. Among these may be cited
Copernicus' theory of the earth's movement, Lamarck's classification
of vertebrate and invertebrate animals, the laws of friction,
the laws of combustion and respiration, the elevation of the
continents, the laws of gravitation, the undulatory theory of light
and heat, steam as a motive power in navigation, flying machines, the
invention of the camera obscura, magnetic attraction, the use of the
stone saw, the system of canalisation, breech loading cannon, the
construction of fortifications, the circulation of the blood, the
swimming belt, the wheelbarrow, the composition of explosives, the
invention of paddle wheels, the smoke stack, the mincing machine! It
is, therefore, easy to see why he called "Mechanics the Paradise
of the Sciences."
Leonardo was a SUPERMAN.