Revered today as; perhaps; the greatest of Renaissance painters; Leonardo da Vinci was a scientist at heart. The artist who created the Mona Lisa also designed functioning robots and digital computers; constructed flying machines and built the first heart valve. His intuitive and ingenious approachmdash;a new mode of thinkingmdash;linked highly diverse areas of inquiry in startling new ways and ushered in a new era.In Leonardos Legacy; award-winning science journalist Stefan Klein deciphers the forgotten legacy of this universal genius and persuasively demonstrates that today we have much to learn from Leonardos way of thinking. Klein sheds light on the mystery behind Leonardos paintings; takes us through the many facets of his fascination with water; and explains the true significance of his dream of flying. It is a unique glimpse into the complex and brilliant mind of this inventor; scientist; and pioneer of a new world view; with profound consequences for our times.
#2425807 in eBooks 1997-05-13 1997-05-13File Name: B003HNNMPW
Review
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Best critical tool for unlocking tragedy so far writtenBy Thomas De Voe WorthenFirst let me state that this book is NOT for a person untutored in Greek tragedy. You have to know the plays well to begin to fathom the exquisite sense Mr. Wiles analysis lends to an often mysterious performance-art form of which we have remaining only text.That done. I will content myself and the discerning reader with a single extended quote:"The Greek spectator did not leave his real physical environment behind and through his imagination somehow enter into a fictional universe where all spatial relationships are relative and the dramatic action is a closed structure. Fellow spectators were inescapably part of his visual field. So was the sun. His sense of absolute rather than relative space depended. above all. on the sense of the east. the direction of the sunrise which was near enough due east at the spring equinox when the City Dionysia took place. The temple of Dionysus and sacrificial rituals in the sanctuary faced east in accordance with standard Greek practice."From this resolution the author takes up in detail issues. sometimes controversial sometimes unexplored.drawn from scenes from almost every play in the corpus of Greek tragedy. In an amazingly learned tour de force he shows how the space of performance was organized along dual axes: up-down. east-west. inside-outside. The audience was at once outside and inside the performance.
