Leonardo da Vinci the Unschooler

Anna    Community, General     da vinci, famous autodidacts, famous unschoolers, leonardo da vinci, polymath, quotations, quotes, renaissance man

A polymath is a person, with superior intelligence, whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. … [The term] Renaissance Man … [is] used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. – Wikipedia

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance man, in both terms of the word. Born in 1452, he was born straight into the Renaissance polymath ideal. Leonardo was an architect, painter, sculptor, musician, botanist, mathematician, engineer, anatomist, scientist, writer and inventor. He fit into the polymath ideal very well.

Leonardo is renowned for his amazing intelligence, and is the painter of what could arguably be called the most famous painting in the world: the Mona Lisa.

What you may not know about him is that he was self-educated. Leonardo received little to no formal training outside of the arts (untrained artists were unheard of during the Renaissance). His work was ridiculed by his scholarly peers, and in his notebooks Leonardo even states, “I know that many will call this useless work.”

Today, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In his notebooks, Leonardo speaks several times about his perspective as an autodidact. I’d like to share a couple quotes from him.

• “Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy— on experience, the mistress of their Masters.”

• “Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. These rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false— and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation— and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy.”

I’ll let his words speak for themselves. What do they say to you?

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