We all think we know Leonardo da Vinci.
We say, okay, Mona Lisa, Last Supper, but we
don't really know how that connected to
his engineering, or why he loved the
ripples of water, why the river flows the
way it does in the Mona Lisa and feels
like it curves into her blood streams,
And I think by looking at his notebooks
and just reading the more than 7,000
pages of notebooks we have of his, it
gave me a real sense, a deeper sense, of
his fertile imagination, creativity, and
playfulness. I discovered that Leonardo
had an incredible curiosity. He just
wanted to know everything you could
possibly know about everything that was
knowable. Whether it was anatomy or
zoology or art or painting or optics, and
how to dissect humans, and what the human
heart valve looked like, but also had to
build flying machines, and how to paint
paintings. So, by loving everything, he was
able to see patterns across nature. I
think everybody that I've written about
loves combining the arts and the
sciences. Whenever Steve Jobs went into
product presentation, he'd show that
street sign of the intersection of the
Arts and the sciences.
When Einstein had trouble doing general
relativity, he pulled out his violin and
played Mozart. And, of course, Benjamin
Franklin loved everything about writing,
the arts, the humanities, but also flew a
kite in the rain to discover electricity.
The ultimate in that is Leonardo da
Vinci.
I grew up right near Tulane and I
remember learning to ride my bike on
Gibson quad. My father and my mother and
my grandparents all had gone to Tulane.
My father was an engineer who also did
some of the Tulane building. So he would
show me every classroom and every attic
and everything about Tulane, so I
feel I know the campus just about as
well as anybody.
