The voices / 391 fragments
Leonardo da Vinci
1452 AD — 1519 AD
Artist and observer whose notebooks connect looking, drawing and inquiry into nature. These archive passages come from a 1906 English selection of his notes, not a continuous philosophical book composed by Leonardo.
Author and source reference ↗Life and writing
Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519. Drawing was central to his investigation of the visible world: observations of bodies, movement and natural forms could become studies for art as well as records of inquiry. His surviving notes and drawings show a practice in which looking closely and asking how something works often belonged to the same activity.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519 ↗ Metropolitan Museum essay: lifetime, observation and drawing as investigation
The notebooks preserve working material rather than a single finished argument, including inquiries into different subjects. Thoughts on Art and Life arranges selected passages in a later English edition, translated by Maurice Baring and edited by Lewis Einstein. Reading each complete numbered selection with its section title helps distinguish reflections on knowledge from practical instructions or a historical scientific claim.
Victoria and Albert Museum — Leonardo’s notebooks ↗Project Gutenberg — Thoughts on Art and Life, PG 29904 ↗ V&A notebooks overview; checked 1906 selection and original editorial reading guidance
Reading this voice
Begin with a passage about knowledge or observation, then explore the Life, Art and Science sections of the same source edition. A memorable image is not evidence that a historical scientific claim is correct. The 1906 selection and translation postdate Leonardo’s life; its unit numbers belong to that edition. The archive’s approximate 1486 coordinate is his lifetime midpoint, not a date attached to the words.
Subjects to explore
Editorial reading connections, distinct from the archive’s word matching.
A work to read
Begin with these archive passages
Editorial starting points from this author’s existing entries.
- All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.
Thoughts on Life, complete printed unit 5; Maurice Baring translation; Boston: The Merrymount Press,1906
- Before I proceed further I will make some experiments, because it is my intention to cite the experiment first and then to demonstrate by reasoning how such an experiment must necessarily take effect in such a manner. And this is the true rule by which investigations of natural phenomena must proceed; and although nature herself begins from the reason and ends in the result, we must pursue the contrary course and begin, as I said above, from experience and by it seek out the reason.
Thoughts on Science, complete printed unit 68; Maurice Baring translation; Boston: The Merrymount Press,1906
- In explaining the action of water remember to cite experience first and then reason.
Thoughts on Science, complete printed unit 54; Maurice Baring translation; Boston: The Merrymount Press,1906
Profile sources and editorial status
Original agent-assisted editorial profile, checked 2026-10-04. No human review is recorded. Life dates are recorded to the year; they do not date individual quotations.