Growing up, I remember reading about Leonardo Da Vinci, when I was very young, about 8 or 9 years old. I used to get a weekly magazine which would consist of a short biography on different historical figures and their related works. This particular week was dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci. I remember being fascinated by pictures of his notebooks and the intricate anatomical drawings of humans and animals.
I later went on to read about Leonardo in much more detail and listened to the biography by Walter Issacson and also two other books,
How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci by Michael Gleb
The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
One thing that struck me was how Leonardo approached learning and knowledge. In my education, I found that I was always taught subjects in compartments so that you would have an art class and then science and then maths. This compartmentalisation became even more distinct as and science was split further into more and more individualised niche subjects.
If you look at Da Vinci’s work, he seems to have taken the approach of learning and acquiring knowledge for searching out the answer to a question and learning subjects for curiosity. So, for example, the great works of art, like the Mona Lisa, you can see there has been thought given to the mathematical symmetry and proportions, the nature of light and reflection and the physics related to this and then anatomy of the face and the body and how facial expressions differ and which muscles create that smile.
There are further examples of this in Walter Isaacson’s biography, one which stands out is how Da Vinci spent so much time studying the properties of water and liquids and how the water flows in streams. He used this knowledge and applied it to the flow of blood in the heart and showed early insights into how the valves in the heart close due to the flow of blood, something which was confirmed only recently, years after his death.
I have tried to take on a similar approach and will take on a different area of interest every month or two months and study all I can about it, read as much as I can and watch online content and listen to audiobooks. Often it is something that I find I can implement, and it makes a small change in life or business, and once in a while, I find that bit of information that makes a significant impact.
We now live in a time where knowledge is much more readily available, and this should be used to our advantage. To learn for a love of a subject, to cultivate a curiosity of all things, even those outside our main areas of interest and then learn to find the connections between different regions. It is in these connections where innovation and creativity lies.
