Читать книгу Think Like Da Vinci: 7 Easy Steps to Boosting Your Everyday Genius - Michael Gelb - Страница 10

Baby ducks learn to survive by imitating their mothers. Learning through imitation is fundamental to many species, including humans. As we become adults, we have a unique advantage: we can choose whom and what to imitate. We can also consciously choose new models to replace the ones we outgrow. It makes sense, therefore, to choose the best “role models” to guide and inspire us toward the realization of our potential.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) was the original uomo universale and one of Leonardo’s “role models.” Architect, engineer, mathematician, painter, and philosopher, Alberti was also a gifted athlete and musician.

So, if you want to become a better golfer, study Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods. If you want to become a leader, study Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Queen Elizabeth I. And if you want to be a Renaissance man or woman, study Leon Battista Alberti, Thomas Jefferson, Hildegard von Bingen, and best of all, Leonardo da Vinci.

In The Book of Genius Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene make the world’s first objective attempt to rank the greatest geniuses of history. Rating their subjects in categories including “Originality,” “Versatility,” “Dominance-in-Field,” “Universality-of-Vision,” and “Strength and Energy,” they offer the following as their “top ten.”

10. Albert Einstein

9. Phidias (architect of Athens)

8. Alexander the Great

7. Thomas Jefferson

6. Sir Isaac Newton

5. Michelangelo

4. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

3. The Great Pyramid Builders

2. William Shakespeare

And the greatest genius of all time, according to Buzan and Keene’s exhaustive research? Leonardo da Vinci.

As Giorgio Vasari wrote of Leonardo in the original version of his The Lives of the Artists, “Heaven sometimes sends us beings who represent not humanity alone but divinity itself, so that taking them as our models and imitating them, our minds and the best of our intelligence may approach the highest celestial spheres. Experience shows that those who are led to study and follow the traces of these marvelous geniuses, even if nature gives them little or no help, may at least approach the supernatural works that participate in his divinity.”

Our evolving understanding of the multiplicity of intelligence and the capacities of the brain suggests that nature gives us more help than we might have imagined. In Think Like Da Vinci we will “study and follow the traces” of this most marvelous of all geniuses, bringing his wisdom and inspiration to your life, every day.