ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with Leonardo da Vinci's observations on the most widely used method of constructing painter's perspective in his time—perspectiva artificialis. The grandiose sweep of Leonardo's efforts to establish new scientific procedures may raise them to a comparable level, making them relevant to a study of the borderlines between science and other aspects of culture. Leonardo made the faculty of vision—or more precisely, the gift and patience for intensive observation—the foundation of both his scientific investigations and his work as a figural artist. Science in Leonardo's time was predominantly descriptive. The fields in which progress was made were those that could be investigated with the eye—anatomy, botany, cartography, zoology, and ornithology. Leonardo starts from books, but in almost every field of investigation he moves from traditional explanation to one based on his own experiments and experience. In an early sheet from the Codex Atlanticus, Leonardo attempts to establish a unitary—percussion—theory of the transmission of sense impressions.
