THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN SCIENCE 79 



that Leonardo's reputation in this field rests not alone upon 

 his creation of a few great paintings but upon the fact that 

 he possessed so wide a perception of the possibilities of this 

 form of artistic expression. He has been characterized as 

 "not so much a painter as a great inventor in painting." 

 Corot, for example, proclaimed him, "The creator of modern 

 landscape," although the landscape feature in Leonardo's 

 paintings is seemingly an insignificant part. His attitude as 

 an artist was rather that of the man of science than that of 

 the traditional man of art. For him, reality and perfection 

 were the same. This explains the seemingly incongruous 

 union of the artist and the scientist. The list of the mechan- 

 ical devices to which he devoted intensive study, is amazing 

 in its extent and diversity. Some of the more interesting 

 cases are the following: He was the real pioneer worker in 

 aviation, as a science in which air currents, specific gravity, 

 the flight of birds, and the like were studied, along with the 

 production of a heavier-than-air flying-machine (Fig. 7). 

 He seems to have made as much speculative and observa- 

 tional progress with the problem as was possible before the 

 creation of modern machinery and the invention of internal 

 combustion engines. He devised a variety of machine guns 

 and other similar mechanisms, a machine for excavating 



concludes "that the saltness of the sea is due to the numerous springs of 

 water, which, in penetrating the earth, find the salt mines, and dissolving parts 

 of these carry them away with them to the ocean and to the other seas, from 

 whence they are never lifted by the clouds which produce the rivers. So the 

 sea would be more salt in our times than it has ever been at any time pre- 

 viously; and if it were argued by the adversary that in an infinite course of 

 time the sea would either become dried up or congealed into salt, to this I 

 reply that the salt is restored to the earth by the setting free of the earth which 

 is raised up together with the salt it has acquired, and the rivers restore it to 

 the earth over which they flow." His arguments against the explanation of 

 marine shells of fossil deposits as having been left by the Noachian deluge dis- 

 play a knowledge of geological fact and method which did not become common 

 information until after the work of James Button toward the close of the 

 eighteenth century. Numerous quotations from his scientific writings are 

 easily accessible in the volume entitled: "Leonardo da Vinci's Note Bookc," 

 by Edward McCurdy. See also: Wetham, loc. tit. 



