Da Vinci Code - What The Tech Age Can Learn From Leonardo - Financial Times

4/27/2019 Da Vinci code: what the tech age can learn from Leonardo | Financial Times
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Da Vinci code: what the tech age can learn from Leonardo
Five hundred years after his death, the old master still has new lessons to teach us
Preparations for the exhibition ‘Da Vinci — The Genius’ in Rotterdam, 2013 © EPA
Ian Goldin YESTERDAY
Five centuries after his death, Leonardo da Vinci is more famous than ever. Upwards of six million
people a year crowd into the Louvre to gaze at his Mona Lisa, his Last Supper remains the most
reproduced religious work of all time and in 2017 the Salvator Mundi, the last of his paintings to
be in private hands, broke auction records to sell for $450m. His instantly recognisable Vitruvian
man adorns countless walls, book covers and the Euro coin.
While Leonardo is recognised principally for his artistic genius, barely a dozen paintings can be
unequivocally attributed to him. In life, he defined himself not as an artist but as an engineer and
architect. More than 7,000 pages of his notebooks have survived, showing the workings of a mind
unfettered by disciplinary boundaries, the ultimate embodiment of Renaissance humanism and
creativity.
History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. The Renaissance catapulted Italy from the Medieval
age to become the most advanced place on Earth. Already by 1500, Italian average incomes were
30 per cent higher than the western European average.
Then, as now, change brought immense riches to some and growing anxiety and disillusionment to
others. We too live in an age of accelerating change, one that has provoked its own fierce backlash.
https://www.ft.com/content/0d864b94-668b-11e9-a79d-04f350474d62 1/17
What lessons can we draw from Leonardo and his time to ensure that we not only benefit from a
new flourishing, but that progress will be sustained?
When we think of the Renaissance, we think of Florence. Leonardo arrived in the city in the mid
1460s, and as a teenager was apprenticed to the painter Verrocchio. The city was already an
incubator for ideas. At the centre of the European wool trade, by the late 14th century Florence had
become the home of wealthy merchants including the Medicis, who were bankers to the Papal
Court. Their interest in humanist philosophical thought, extensive patronage for the arts and
commissioning of finely decorated buildings spawned creative workshops and attracted artisans,
artists, writers and philosophers from the rest of Italy and beyond.
‘Drawing of a Flying Machine’, (c1480) © Getty

The city’s rapid advances were associated with the information and ideas revolution that defines
the Renaissance. Johann Gutenberg had used moveable type to publish his Bible in the early 1450s,
and between the time of Leonardo’s birth in 1452 and his 20th birthday, some 15m books were
printed, more than all the European scribes had produced over the previous 1,500 years.
The information revolution did not make the significance of place less important: it made it more
so. Individuals who wish to be at the frontier of change head to dynamic places in search of like-
minded innovators, stimulating ideas and finance. Today, that might be Silicon Valley; Florence
during the Renaissance became similarly attractive. The Florentine tolerance of diversity and
immigrants, including significant numbers of Muslims and Jews, pollinated the Renaissance
flowering, with incomers contributing ideas and techniques that defined its art.
Mechanical wing with gears, technical and mechanical drawings from a notebook, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Today the benefits of globalisation and the digital economy are concentrated in dynamic cities such
as San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, New Delhi and Shenzhen. Not by accident do they
share with Renaissance Florence the same combination of a tolerance of diversity and higher
numbers of immigrants, who nowadays are at least twice as likely as locally born citizens to be
associated with intellectual and artistic breakthroughs, as measured by Nobel Prizes, Academy
Awards, patents or start-ups.
Thus the first lesson of the Renaissance is that genius does not simply arise, it needs to be
nurtured. Extraordinary talent — genius — is randomly distributed. This means that there should
be many modern-day Leonardos waiting to be discovered. There were barely 500m people alive at
the time of the Renaissance, of which perhaps 10m were literate. Today there are more than 7.7bn
people, of which some 6.5bn are literate. Due to sheer numbers, exceptionally talented people are
likely to emerge from the bustling streets of Mumbai, Shanghai, Sao Paulo or Soweto. Will the
future Leonardos be supported in their endeavours? And will we welcome the diverse origins of
revolutionary ideas?
A second lesson is that genius transcends disciplinary boundaries. Leonardo’s quizzical mind
roamed freely across what now are rigidly guarded domains. His journals reveal hundreds of
inventions, including for aircraft, helicopters, tanks, submarines, parachutes, diving equipment,
reading glasses, musical instruments, weaving looms and much more. Many of these innovations
were beyond the comprehension, let alone the fabrication capabilities, of the time, and could only
be tested hundreds of years later, when metallurgy, manufacturing and mechanics finally caught
up with Leonardo and could give practical expression to his visionary ideas.
Two drawings of the heart, drawn by Leonardo Da Vinci, c1513. Image shot 1947 © Alamy
Leonardo’s approach was deductive and observational. He drew on his meticulous examination of
the world around him and relied on empirical evidence, rather than conceptual theories, for which
he did not have the necessary mathematical or other formal education. He studied anatomy by
dissecting corpses, from which he made hundreds of detailed drawings. These revealed for the first
time the extraordinarily complex and layered physiological and biomechanical relations between
different organs and systems in not only the human body, but also in horses, cows, birds, bears,
frogs and other animals.
Leonardo’s legendary curiosity meant that he sought to understand and find solutions to an
amazing array of questions. He was a beneficiary of the fact that the sharp distinctions which are
today drawn between disciplines, and between the arts and sciences, had not yet been established.
‘Studies of the Foetus in the Womb’ (c1510) © Getty

Today, the increasing depth of knowledge in any field means that greater specialisation is needed
to master ideas. Yet this stifles creativity and the ability to grapple with real-world problems,
whose messy complexity has less and less in common with the increasingly fragmented disciplines
and professional specialisation. Attempts to overcome this with which I have been associated, such
the Oxford Martin School and the free online CORE-econ.org curriculum, reflect a desire to
provide a more holistic approach to learning, as does the encouragement of combined liberal arts
and scientific subjects in university curricula.
The third and most vital lesson of the Renaissance is that when things change more quickly,
people get left behind more quickly. The Renaissance ended because the first era of global
commerce and information revolution led to widening uncertainty and anxiety. The printing
revolution provided populists with the means to challenge old authorities and channel the
discontent that arose from the highly uneven distribution of the gains and losses from newly
globalising commerce and accelerating technological change.
Drawings of ﬂowers by Leonardo, together with some notes and diagrams © Corbis/Getty Images
The Renaissance teaches us that progress cannot be taken for granted. The faster things change,
the greater the risk of people being left behind. And the greater their anger.
Renaissance Florence was famously liberal-minded

until a loud demagogue filled in the majority’s silence
The faster things change, with rage and bombast. The firebrand preacher
the greater the risk of Girolamo Savonarola tapped into the fear that
citizens felt about the pace of change and growing
people being left behind. inequality, as well as the widespread anger towards
And the greater their anger the rampant corruption of the elite. Seizing on the
new capacity for cheap print, he pioneered the
political pamphlet, offering his followers the prospect
of an afterlife in heaven while their opponents were condemned to hell. His mobilisation of
indignation — combined with straightforward thuggery — deposed the Medicis, following which he
launched a campaign of public purification, symbolised by the burning of books, cosmetics,
jewellery, musical instruments and art, culminating in the 1497 Bonfire of the Vanities.
In retrospect, we should not be surprised that people were angry. Conspicuous inequality was
growing as few benefited from trade with the New World, and even fewer could afford the spices
and other luxuries that started to appear in the markets.
'Drawing of a Flying Machine with a Man Operating It', c1480 (1945)

The church was seen to favour the rich, absolving the sins of those who could afford to pay
indulgences. Jobs were being threatened and while life felt more precarious, not least due to the
spread of new diseases and gunpowder, the old certainties were being eroded.
If this sounds familiar, it is. Today as then, the backlash against progress feeds on a widespread
sense of injustice. The distribution of gains and losses brought about by economic, social and
technological upheaval is bitterly uneven. In these Renaissance moments, while some flourish and
thrive, others are left behind and understandably become anxious and angry.
The internet creates hives around which communities can form to create beautiful new music,
work with data in the cloud to aid cancer researchers, or mobilise against climate change. The
speed and extent to which progressive ideas can pollinate from a single individual is evident in the
#MeToo movement, or Greta Thunberg’s sparking of a global climate change protest. Disparate
groups can now coalesce into issues-based alliances, as is evident in the Extinction Rebellion
movement.
‘Design for a Flying Machine’ (1488) © Alamy

But, as Leonardo knew, and the Silicon Valley techno-evangelists too often neglect, information
revolutions don’t only allow good ideas to flourish. They also provide a platform for dangerous
ideas. The Zuckerberg information revolution can pose a similar threat to that of Gutenberg.
In the battle of ideas, populists are able to mobilise the disaffected more effectively than cerebral
scientists, decently disciplined innovators and the moderate and often silent majority. For progress
to prevail, evidence-based, innovative and reasoned thinking must triumph.
Genius thrived in the Renaissance because of the supportive ecosystem that aided the creation and
dissemination of knowledge — which then was crushed by the fearful inquisitions. Today, tolerance
and evidence-based argument are again under threat. Leonardo devoted his life to learning and
discovery. More than ever, we need to learn from this transcendent old master.
Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford university. ‘Age of

Discovery: Navigating the Storms of Our Second Renaissance’, is co-authored with Chris
Kutarna. @ian_goldin
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4/27/2019 Da Vinci code: what the tech age can learn from Leonardo | Financial Times

Weekend long reads

Ian Goldin YESTERDAY

‘Drawing of a Flying Machine’, (c1480) © Getty

‘Studies of the Foetus in the Womb’ (c1510) © Getty

Renaissance Florence was famously liberal-minded

'Drawing of a Flying Machine with a Man Operating It', c1480 (1945)

‘Design for a Flying Machine’ (1488) © Alamy

Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford university. ‘Age of

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2019. All rights reserved.

Explore the series

Inside the UK’s debt crisis

Gauls, gilets jaunes and the ﬁght for French identity

How much longer can New York’s tenants remain in control?

China’s shrinking cities: ‘Most of my classmates have left’

The houses that architects build for themselves

Pasta Grannies: the Italian ‘nonnas’ who’ve become a YouTube sensation

See all 15 stories

Follow the topics in this article

How easy or hard was it to use FT.com today?

You might also like