The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind
of the Great Genius of the Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci, the great master painter and genius of the Renaissance, has been the subject of hundreds of scholarly and popular books. However, there are surprisingly few books about Leonardo’s science, although he left voluminous notebooks full of detailed descriptions of his experiments, magnificent drawings, and long analyses of his findings.

Moreover, most authors who have discussed Leonardo’s scientific work examined it through a Newtonian lens. This has often prevented them from understanding its essential nature, which is that of a science of organic forms, a science of qualities, one that is radically different from the mechanistic science of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton.

The Science of Leonardo presents a radically new interpretation of Leonardo’s science, evaluated from the perspective of 21st century scientific thought. Studying Leonardo from this perspective not only allows us to recognize his science as a solid body of knowledge, but also shows why it cannot be understood without his art, nor his art without the science.

“A brilliant and sound assessment of Leonardo's approach to science, viewed in the cultural context of his time, and through the development of scientific thought in the succeeding centuries. Both deep and new, it is a bold and successful exploration of the working of Leonardo’s mind.”
– Carlo Pedretti, Professor Emeritus, Armand Hammer Chair of Leonardo Studies, UCLA

“Capra, author of the classic The Tao of Physics, makes the case in this fascinating intellectual biography for the great artist Leonardo being the unsung ‘father of modern science.’ Drawing on approximately 6,000 pages and 100,000 drawings surviving from Leonardo’s scattered notebooks, Capra explores the groundbreaking research of this quintessential Renaissance man.”
– Publishers Weekly

“Fritjof Capra paints a vivid and compelling picture of one of the greatest geniuses in history, Leonardo Da Vinci, by skillfully weaving together all the different strands of Leonardo's master works and finally revealing the true power and breathtaking scope of his life. Leonardo himself would have nodded in approval of this book, because for the first time it crystallizes the entire body of his work into a coherent, unified whole.”
– Michio Kaku, Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and bestselling author of Hyperspace

“The Science of Leonardo is a fascinating glimpse of the road not taken by Western Science. But Capra makes a compelling case that the science of the future may look a lot more like Leonardo's than Bacon's or Descartes — a science of systems, non-reductive and akin to an art.”
– Michael Pollan, author of Botany of Desire and Omnivore’s Dilemma

“Minutely researched, vividly written, and endlessly fascinating, The Science of Leonardo opens up a realm which has never been adequately appreciated. It makes one wonder, as Capra does, whether the history of science might have been quite different had a full publication of Leonardo’s notebooks not had to wait until four centuries after his death.”
– Dr. Oliver Sacks, bestselling author and neurologist