Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List (circa 1490) | Hacker News Reader

Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List (circa 1490)

openculture.com

274 pointsedw51968 comments

What the article fails to recognize is the sheer difficulty and expense involved in acquiring information in those days. You not only needed lots of money; you also needed status and political friends who could connect you through their networks to people who know things about your subject of interest. Even getting a peek into a book was an arduous affair, sometimes taking years. There's a reason why the gentry were so fond of collecting books.

So yes, anyone politically, socially, and economically powerful enough, with an ounce of curiosity, would have a list such as this. I do the same for anything I can't get within a month.

And remember that paper was extremely expensive for ordinary people back then. Using it for something silly as a todo list seems as wastefull as using a JavaScript framework for just a todo app. ;)

Your basic assumption is todo app is not as expensive as the paper in that era. In that era paper was expensive, in this era todo app is expensive which require a smart phone (or a computer or laptop) connected to the internet.

And a reason why I was so keen on collecting books in 1969, too. If you didn't buy it while it was in print, or the moment you spotted it in a used bookstore, you might never see it again in your lifetime. Now I'm going through and dumping a whole lot of those books, (or should be.)

Before I reached the last sentence, I looked hard at the image and opened it in a new tab, thinking I could read his writing (since I learned high-intermediate Italian). Nope, it's mirrored [1], which may have had to do with his dyslexia.

Looking into it briefly, I came across a guy [2] who taught himself to write like Da Vinci (note: full-screen sign-up prompt upon clicking). Skip to to the 6th paragraph starting with "Perhaps...". Being a lefty, I think I'll give mirrored writing a go as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_writing

http://michaelbalchan.com/davinciwriting/?hvid=3xsKQB

Edit: from the Wikipedia link above:

"Research suggests that the ability to do mirror writing is probably inherited and caused by atypical language organization in the brain. It is not known how many people in the population inherit the ability of mirror writing (an informal Australian newspaper experiment identified 10 true mirror-writers in a readership of 65,000). Half of the children of people with the ability inherit it. A higher proportion of left-handed people are better mirror writers than right-handed people, probably because it's more natural for a left-hander to write backwards."

mirror writing is actually easier to start doing with whatever hand you write with less often; i'd argue due to having less muscle memory to have to subvert

mirror writing is only mirrored from a social standpoint

all writing is just random lines we ascribe context to

leonardo was a visual artist

abstracting symbols from strokes is a part of the discipline

and like finding your line while participating in a visual medium mirror writing is best developed through doing

See my post for the real reason why. You must be right-handed based on your first sentence.

> due to having less muscle memory to have to subvert

Actually better than that: you can more directly transfer skill from one hand to the other if you’re making exactly mirrored motions.

This is why I think e.g. keyboard instruments should mirror the order of notes between the left and right hand parts. Then you can get away with learning one uniform set of finger motions, instead of two.

> This is why I think e.g. keyboard instruments should mirror the order of notes between the left and right hand parts. Then you can get away with learning one uniform set of finger motions, instead of two.

Funny. I’m currently learning piano and I thought the same thing. I’m considering writing a small MIDI tool to mirror the order of notes, either for half of one keyboard, or for one whole keyboard next to another.

Have you tried anything like this yet?

EDIT: Apparently it’s been done at least once before, as a physical instrument:

http://www.mim.be/double-piano-with-mirrored-keyboards-by-le...

I don't know whether it has anything to do with being left-handed, but I used to mirror-write notes whenever I was bored in class and didn't find it difficult with the exception of letters that required me to lift the pen off the paper and that went away with some practice.

I assume you mirrored it back?

Mirror writing enables lefties to not smudge the ink (no ballpoint pens back then).

I don't remember much of the Arabic I learned, but I mastered the script because I found writing English-in-Arabic-script so much easier as a lefty that I wrote a lot of my notes that way.

This comes up when I practice calligraphy as well. I'm right handed and if I'm doing an LTR script (like English), I can manage fairly well without a guard sheet but if I'm doing something like Arabic, I need to be way more careful since my hand will be on top the fresh letters I write. That, apart from the lack of good instructional material, is probably why I moved away from Arabic calligraphy although I really love the form of it.

Medieval Arabic scribes would turn the paper on its side and write from top to bottom to avoid exactly this problem. It's why Arabic numerals are sideways compared to European "Arabic" numerals.

I'm left handed, and was educated in a country where using a fountain pen is required until middle school (at least it was when I was growing up).

Every time there was a smudge on a piece of work, my 2nd grade teacher would tear it apart and make me do it all over again. I usually finished way before the other kids anyways, and even doing that I was still usually done before the others.

I can write really neatly now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How did you achieve that? I ended up writing "overhand" (mirrored in the plane of the nib from the right-hand method), so the edge of my hand was always on top of the work. I ended up using blotter paper to avoid resting directly on the already-written ink.

> Every time there was a smudge on a piece of work, my 2nd grade teacher would tear it apart and make me do it all over again

Ah, the brutal conformism of education :(

Yeah, pretty much something like that. My hand tends to be higher above what I write, and I avoid contact with the paper as much as possible. I also use blotting paper.

Some inks dry faster too, so it's worth trying a few different ones.

I still mostly use a fountain pen for taking notes, which gets me a lot of weird looks at work (first for taking notes on paper, then because of the fountain pen).

My son is a lefty and while learning to write he would write several words mirrored and mix them with normal writing. When asked he really couldn't see the difference. It all looked fine to him.

I did my Engineering Physics I homework using mirrored writing. The instructor didn't mind. Looking back, it's a bit risky given you're drawing equations and arrows, not only text. I hadn't tried this before or since.

At the end of the semester, I told him physics seemed fun but I thought software engineering was a better career choice for me. Only years later did I find via LinkedIn that he had worked as a software engineer for ten years before. :D

"probably because it's more natural for a left-hander to write backwards".

No, the key is that pulling the writing instrument requires a lot less muscle than pushing it. This means that mirror writing requires 1) more muscle strain or 2) less muscle strain than writing with the dominant hand if either the hand is switched, or the direction (LTR or RTL). If you swap both factors at the same time, then the strain is the same.

Left-handers who write LTR and switch direction (RTL) reduce the muscle strain compared to their usual writing as they're now pulling the pen. A right hander who does the same in this situation has to push the pen RTL with their right hand, which is harder than they're used to. A right hander should use the left-hand for mirror writing so they pull the pen like they're used to.

From this information, you can derive why people think it's easier to mirror write by switching hands, and others think it's easier for left-handers than right-handers to mirror write with their original hand.

TL;DR: Yes, there is initial effort to start mirror writing. But the real difference is that in the long-term, one group will find mirror writing to cause more hand strain than normal, and others will find it less hand strain than normal, because in one group pushing the pen is normal and in the other pulling it is.

You've actualy inspired me to try mirror writing - I am left-handed (though I can write smht with my right hand), well I found it easy, intuitive and natural. With a bit of practive I guess I could write in mirror-mode every time, cool!

I tried mirror writing when I was young because my mom could do it. The muscle strain was the reason I didn't keep up with it (right handed). That, and having to think more when trying to read it ;-)

Huh, I've know about Da Vinci's mirror writing since I was a kid, and I've tried it and never thought about it as something that might be hard for anyone. I just tried two sentences and the first one was hard - I kept wanting to do the shapes "the right way", but the second one was pretty speedy.

I wouldn't say it was very readable, but then again my normal writing isn't either. I'm left handed, though.

HN: come for the links, stay for the 20+ replies about the benefits of mirror writing.

> You can just feel Da Vinci’s voracious curiosity and intellectual restlessness. Note how many of the entries are about getting an expert to teach him something

Nowadays that seems less common, with the incredibly amount of information available and readily accessible. However, I think learning from someone, even from just a short conversation, is highly valuable.

Yeah I never understood why people aren't more curious. I'm always looking for articles about how things are made, the history of given locations, and whatever just seems interesting. I never see anyone else with a marginally equivalent level of curiosity especially for my age (mid-30s). Seems like people get swallowed whole by their social lives and careers.

I completely agree — for me it was always the attraction of of hypertext, of the internet. Every term, concept or media, explorable. Practically infinitely-so.

What went wrong?

(well, aside from the internet becoming largely one-way and unmodifiable by the masses.. but there's no real solution for 'that' (whatever that is) yet).

> aside from the internet becoming largely one-way and unmodifiable by the masses

If anything, it's as easy as ever to share knowledge. Just because the barrier to entry is now creating value on other people's websites instead of figuring out how to set up and promote your own doesn't mean its not easier.

What makes you think they aren't as curious as you?

They might just be into different subjects. Plus, if there's nothing that suggests that you might be interested, they might self-censor comments about their own hobby subjects when talking to you.

I think theres a pretty obvious difference between da Vinci-esque broad-reaching intrigue and just having a certain set of hobbies.

I think you can determine how curious you are relative to other people in general by roughly keeping track of how often you are interested in other people's hobbies versus how often they are interested in yours. It won't tell you anything about a particular person, but over a year, if you're interested in other people's hobbies daily and other people never care about yours, it's safe to assume that you're more curious than the average person.

I was going to add that this only works if your hobbies are fairly normal hobbies, but wouldn't it also be safe to assume that you're more curious than normal if you have a bunch of normal hobbies in addition to a bunch of unusual hobbies that no one wants to talk about?

I think it's not that they're uncurious but that maybe their lives are full of a routine that limits acting on it hence why I said they get swallowed whole by their daily lives.

You would enjoy James Burke's Connections series. It is curiosity driven.

There are very few Renaissance men (and women) around today. I've met a startling number of people who spend time online but never encountered Wikipedia, there is also very large number of university students who have no interest in reading. This goes to show it is not about access to information or elite institutions.

That doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It is probably more worthwhile because fewer people are doing it. One prominent example among ourselves is Gwern, he is a great example to us. A lot of the most interesting threads on HN are where the discussion is regarding something not obviously connected to programming, such as woodworking. The most famous AMA in Reddit's history was a vacuum cleaner salesman, which was fascinating and bolstered my regard for Redditors as a healthy if fractious community with a native curiosity not evident on most social networking sites. In my opinion the best people have a mixture of useful values from different social classes - working, middle, upper. LessWrong has an expression parallel to this I'll paraphrase as 'hold your identity loosely'.

If anybody feels like they're stuck in a rut, unmotivated to be 'curiosity-productive', check out 'Japanology' on Youtube. Peter Barakan could make anything interesting. I always get a lift after watching his documentaries.

I agree. I definitely feel less curious as I've gotten older. One angle is - given how easy it is to access information, curiosity is more often a distraction than a benefit.

> I never see anyone else with a marginally equivalent level of curiosity especially for my age (mid-30s)

I'm in my early 30s, and the combination of work and having a very young child certainly puts an upper bound on the available free time and energy you have in any given day.

I hear ya.

Yep. I think that is the spirit of HN's "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." in the guidelines.

I love the articles about odd but interesting things, or deep dives in "foreign" worlds.

These days asking questions of an expert usually gets you a response of JFGI, but learning used to be equal parts "learning the actual thing" and "having fun and stimulating conversations with like-minded people" so without the latter, curiosity is less rewarding these days. That's why it's important for those with knowledge to give back to the community by giving of their time. CoderDojo for example

Having said that, learning has ALWAYS involved a lot of solitude and independent research - it's just that "levelling up" used to REQUIRE asking other people for advice, input and tips, whereas with the Internet it's practically expected for people to never ask for help.

Basically, back in the old days, a novice asking "explain this to me" was met with "ah! a fellow academic! how rare! OK here's how it is" whereas today it's met with "google exists for a reason".

Humans beings are motivated by social stimuli

> These days asking questions of an expert usually gets you a response of JFGI

To me it seems that most people I ask questions of are happy to respond. But the key thing being that the ease of asking people questions means that you need to ask people questions they haven't heard a thousand times and written a book about. And that you can easily answer with Google.

It's lazy ad insulting if you e-mail and ask something you'd find a whole article about on the persons site, for example, because it implies you couldn't be bothered to even see they've already written about the subject, and don't respect their time.

But if you ask about the finer points of something they've written, on the other hand, they are more likely to be flattered, intrigued or at least willing to point you in the right direction.

And experts are remarkably out of practice answering (or listening to questions carefully) because Google exists, which reinforces everyone's reluctance to ask humans anything. It can be like pulling teeth to get a sensible answer to the question you actually asked; but then my barista only gives me the decaffeinated coffee I asked for if the first word I utter is "decaffeinated," too. We're all not used to answering questions properly, by now, 'cause questions are what search engines are for, nowadays. But I agree with brachi - if you ask a human, you're more likely to find the related question you should have asked instead, or as well, for example.

>[Talk to] Giannino, the Bombardier, re. the means by which the tower of Ferrara is walled without loopholes (no one really knows what Da Vinci meant by this)

I thought "loopholes" generally referred to a narrow upright window with wide angles in the interior but little room at the outside. It's designed so that you can shoot arrows out of it with a wide degree of freedom, but hard to get an arrow into.

OK, let's agree that that defines 'loopholes' in this context but still what is meant by the overall comment? Why ask about building a tower without loopholes?

The loopholes were for, IIRC, scaffolding/braces used during the construction process; my guess would be that DaVinci wanted to know about the construction process that allowed for the building of a tall building WITHOUT those braces.

Yes, traditionally all stone/masonry buildings (particularly medieval buildings) had these "holes" (they are called "buche pontaie" in Italian, literally "scaffolding holes") to allow for both the scaffolding and lifting devices to be anchored to the walls while building them (and later for maintenance work):

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buca_pontaia

The English word for it is "putlog hole" AFAIK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putlog_hole

https://www.italybeyondtheobvious.com/what-are-those-holes-i...

Interesting! Thank you for sharing.

maybe the blocks a tower is built of normally have holes to lift the blocks by rope, and this tower has no such holes in the blocks.

One of my teachers wrote a book titled "The scientific method of Leonardo da Vinci". Unfortunately it's in Russian only.

http://tung-sten.no-ip.com/Texts/Misc/Leonardo/Book.htm

http://tung-sten.no-ip.com/Texts/Misc/Leonardo/Helper/Forewo...

If he lived today, most items on that list would be googled and forgotten about in one morning. We take our access to endless info for granted.

If he lived today every single answer would be on stackexchange. ;)

It reminds of Gov Schwarzenegger recently saying he doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that mentors are key.

A large part of these are not "do X"; they are in "get Y person to show me how they do X".

We can be thankful of the Messer Fazio, Brera Friar, Giannino, Benedetto Potinari, Maestro Antonio, Mastro Giannetto, Maestro Giovanni and Vitolone who gave us Leonardo.

JFYI, there is a typo in the linked to text, Benedetto Portinari, it's the same Florentine family of Beatrice Portinari, he was the nephew of the more famous Tommaso Portinari:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommaso_Portinari

The "graphical rendition" on the original site has it correct:

http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/11/18/142467882/le...

BTW - still to be picky - the linked article is 2014, whilst the original article by NPR's Robert Krulwich is 2011.

The whole Leonardo's Notebooks are available here (in a different edition/translation by Jean Paul Richter):

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Notebooks_of_Leonardo_Da_...

> Get the master of arithmetic to show you how to square a triangle.

What did he mean by this?

I think he meant finding the square whose area is equal to that of a given triangle.

With our "modern" understanding of algebra and geometry, we know to do

Area = 1/2 * base * height

Area = s^2

therefore

s = sqrt(1/2 * base * height)

"Squaring the circle" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squaring_the_circle) was an ancient challenge, proven to be impossible with a straightedge and compass in the 1800s. He may have been trying to square the triangle with just those tools.

See http://www.contracosta.edu/legacycontent/math/TriangleToSqua...

Wow, I'm actually writing a book that reads just like this list. It's meant for INTJs, it's got 300 suggested activities--similar to those on Da Vinci's list in terms of theme if not object. I'm about to hit publish and seeing this article makes me feel pretty excited. I wonder if Newton also kept to-do lists...

Well... what's the ISBN, title?!

Exactly, this is HN, you can't just say that kind of things and not post a link :)

Haha. Well, I've got a few more steps (graphic design being a huge one) but here's a sample. The full book has just over 300 activities to try; this one has 50. All of the content is final, so I hope to get the book to the major self-publishing outlets in the next month or two.

http://www.friendlyskies.net/files/etexts/sample/300-INTJ-St...

Scroll way down for the meat. Love to know what you think.

Do please announce the finished product on HN. I think it might be interesting to more than just me.

I was trying to actually read the text and then I figured out Leonardo da Vinci wrote in mirror writing (writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language).

Apparently nobody is quite sure why he did this. weird.

When you write with a dip pen (e.g. calligraphy), writing from left to write will smudge the ink if you are left-handed.

Writing the opposite direction preserves the same convenience of movement as right-handed writers have when doing calligraphy, and avoids smudging the ink. It seems an elegant solution for someone who is left-handed.

That reads more like a bucket list than a todo list.

Wonder how our lives would be if we did more to work on our bucket lists than our todo lists.

Some of the best (perhaps cliché) advice I've gotten is not to confuse urgency with importance. It's far too easy to constantly be busy and checking things off of a list, while letting the really high-leverage things go unaddressed. An antidote I've found is to book big things far out, because then urgency doesn't come into play (I'm not worried about the laundry I need to do in March), and I can make the decision based entirely around "importance". So while it's easy to let a random Saturday slip away to todo list chores, if I purchase plane tickets to Japan for 3 months out, by the time it comes around then I'm definitely getting on the plane, chores be damned.

Have you considered getting rid of your mobile telephone? People's ability to prioritize is shattered with these devices or perhaps their ability to use them.

that is the difference between a genius and an ordinary person - what is the bucket list for the latter is just a to do list for the former.

He didn't use org-mode?

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