1. THE UNITY OF NATURE

We are an integral part of nature. In fact, Leonardo saw the human body as a “lesser world” in terms of physical structures and dynamics. This session explores Leonardo's breathtaking observations on nature, covering anatomy, physiology, geology, and paintings with landscapes. Leonardo will teach you to have respect for nature; his works demonstrate our helplessness in the face of massive natural cataclysms.

2. WORKING WITH NATURE

This lesson illustrates how the engineer learns from Nature. For example, Leonardo showed us just how the engineer must work with natural law to design viable schemes. His designs of instruments for the management of water are particularly compelling. His works also show how warfare leads to the destruction of nature. Finally, Leonardo's work on human flight demonstrates the significance of biomimicry in engineering.

3. SEEING AND UNCERTAINTY
Leonardo unveiled that there are things we can know and things we cannot. He emphasises the role of “experience” and experiment in pursuit of knowledge. Yet this lesson explains the move of Leonardo’s early certainties to uncertainty. He adopts the doctrine of “double truth” and "the ineffable", something modern physics is now exploring. Through Leonardo's investigations into optics, we see how he develops the “optics of uncertainty”, which plays into his late paintings.

4. MATHEMATICS OF EVERYTHING
This lesson outlines how Leonardo explores the rules of mathematics in nature, including systems of proportion, arithmetic and the rule of numbers. He places a special emphasis on geometry and incommensurable (irrational) proportions. Leonardo's approach shows us how he saw human creations in this mathematical context through knots, bearings, gears and temples. These insights ultimately lead to him "squaring the circle" with the Vitruvian Man.

5. THE ART OF SCIENCE
We've come to know the concept of lateral thinking, but through Leonardo, we learn about the value of "lateral seeing". In this lesson, selected works of Leonardo's art are looked at in chronological order, together with their scientific aspects such as vortices, light, music, anatomies, physiognomics, bodily mechanics, the folding of cloth and optics. What emerges are the limits of science (vis-a-vis art) when trying to express the infinite.

6. LESSONS FROM LEONARDO
Leonardo's refusal to compartmentalise knowledge stands in sharp contrast to our systems of learning, which constrain our ability to relate the parts to the whole in creative syntheses. Leonardo sees knowledge as a branching tree, and each tree is part of the whole wood. We see neither the trees nor the wood – only twigs. Leonardo's thinking methods might just allow us to make more sense of the complexities of our 21st-century world.