I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man, certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! Do they not know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman Patricians by saying: That they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of; but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words; and [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases.---Leonardo da Vinci [1]
Morris Kline wrote:
Very interesting evidence of the artist's attempt to discover the mathematical essence of this subject is found in one of Leonardo's studies on proportion. . . . The artist of the late Medieval period and the Renaissance was, also, the architect and engineer of his day and so was necessarily mathematically inclined. Businessmen, secular princes, and ecclesiastical officials assigned all construction problems to the artist. He designed and built churches, hospitals, palaces, cloisters, bridges, fortresses, dams, canals, town halls, and instruments of warfare. Numerous drawings of such engineering projects are in da Vinci's notebooks and he, himself, in offering his services to Lodovico Sforza, ruler of Milan, promised to serve as an engineer, constructor of military works, and designer of war machines, as well as architect, sculptor and painter. The artist was even expected to solve problems involving the motion of cannonballs in artillery fire, a task which in those times called for profound mathematical knowledge [2].Kline added:
This striking figure of incredible physical strength and unparalleled mental endowment prepared for painting by deep and extensive studies in anatomy, perspective, geometry, physics, and chemistry. . . . He opened his Trattato della Pittura with the words, "Let no one who is not a mathematician read my works." . . . Leonardo scored those who thought they could ignore theory and produce art by mere practice: rather, "Practice must always be founded on sound theory" [3].
There is no doubt that any investigation on the connections between art, science and technology must include the decisive landmark of the works of Leonardo. In recent years, thanks in part to the journal Leonardo, discussions on the relationships between art and science have been increasing once again among scientists and artists. These discussions started long ago with Leonardo da Vinci, but still have great interest today. One of the main reasons for the renewal of interest between artists and scientists is due to the increasing diffusion of so-called new technologies [4]. The technologies are modifying scientists' and artists' ways of working---and are resulting in a profound modification in the way that art historians investigate art.
As Jacques Mandelbrojt has written, "There is a great need for an aesthetic appraisal of art produced with new technologies" [5]. It is clear that the number of conferences, meetings, workshops, books and newspaper articles on the topic of art and science is rapidly increasing. The investigation of new connections between art and science is probably one of the most interesting cultural phenomena of recent years. A conference dedicated to these topics, entitled The International Workshop on Art and Science, took place in December 1992 in the small town where Leonardo was born---the Tuscan town of Vinci, not far from Florence. This town is particularly interesting for it has a museum dedicated to the macchine (machines) of Leonardo---in it, reproductions of Leonardo's original drawings are placed near a number of three-dimensional running models of the macchine that Leonardo had imagined, if not actually built. Only recently have researchers studying Leonardo's technology built running models of his ideas, although the first investigations based on his ideas started almost 50 years ago [6]. The museum is located in the old Castle of Vinci; a library of Leonardo's references is in the annex of the castle. The International Workshop on Art and Science was organized by the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) and took place in the castle library. WAAS is an independent, international organization whose members are scientists, artists, art historians and critics.
Scientists, artists and art historians participated in the workshop thanks to the support of the Italian National Center for Alternative Energy (ENEA), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the European Economic Community (EEC). I was able to participate in the discussion and thought it would be important for the readers of Leonardo to read about some of the ideas presented. The proceedings of the conference were published in World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, whose editor, Ervin Laszlo, spoke at the conference [7]. I requested and gained permission to publish in Leonardo a small selection of the papers presented at Vinci. Additional papers in this special section were written specifically for Leonardo by some of the workshop participants. Paul Feyerabend was not able to join the conference in Vinci, but he wrote a paper for this special section. I was sad to be informed that, after sending the final version of his contribution, Feyerabend died in February 1994. His paper printed here is one of his last works on the topic of art and science.
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