> If you mean, specifically, that I didn't respond to what you wrote about Da Vinci's painting ability, well, you've said both that he was a good artist and that he was mediocre; and then repeated the performance again.
> I really don't care whether you appreciate his art or not. The rest of the world seems to have reached a consensus on that.
I'm sorry if what I said about his painting was confusing. I consider da Vinci to be a great painter when judging from the reputation that he has with people knowledgeable about art. His paintings are simply not to my personal taste, mostly due to the expressionless faces (now Caravaggio, he has some amazing paintings). Whether you agree or not, I think you'll agree that art is a subjective thing (unlike science/math/engineering). The world also seems to have reached consensus that da Vinci was an amazing all round genius. This is demonstrably wrong, drawing into question the judgement of the world (also note the general belief in the existence of a god, and that the world is flat).
> This really is covered in most undergraduate history and philosophy courses. If you want a discrete list of Da Vinci's major works and his claim to fame, well, Wikipedia is your friend.
The list of science and inventions you gave contains nothing of significance except in painting. Whenever it is even remotely about math/science/engineering, it's mostly about his job as an illustrator, plus a couple of bogus inventions that neither got built nor work (though I'm sure you can find something trivial that he drew that actually worked -- if you draw enough things one of them is bound to work).
> Da Vinci defines the term Renaissance Man. He had his nose into everything. He was prior to the likes of Galileo and Newton and a departure from Aristotle and Plato.
If your point is that he came before them, so he had the time against him, then I'll say again: it's about the delta not about the absolute achievement. Also note that there were lots of proper geniuses LONG before him, like Pythagoras (math; ~600BC), Eratosthenes (math, measured the diameter of the Earth; ~250BC -- what's truly astonishing is that humanity not only forgot the diameter of the Earth, it actually believed that the Earth is flat!) and Euclid (math, physics; ~300BC). On a related note: Aristotle is not in that list; his works on physics are basically bogus, why people ascribe some kind of physics genius to him in history lessons is again beyond me. For amazing engineering just look at the pyramids and the Roman empire.
Lets simplify this: name one important contribution to science, math or engineering.
If you are going to measure genius as only pertaining to math, science and engineering, in the modern senses of the word, then sure. In addition to art you are now excluding music, literature, history, politics, warfare, philosophy, finance, economics, ethics, law, and many other important areas of thought that shape our world.
Da Vinci areas of interest and activity were broad and novel. He was part of the milieu that brought about the modern world.
If you insist on one magic achievement, which seems a bit childish and over simplistic to me, call him a visual synthesist. He worked in modeling and visualization. I'll leave pigeonholing him into a modern discipline up to you. He really predated those holes, which are fuzzy and overlapping at best.
He, along with the other artists and thinkers of his time, created the modern concept of a visual representation. Something so basic and fundamental, and so divergent from what went before, that many people today, totally immersed in it, simply can't see it. It's like the air to them. Any time you see a working drawing, a photographic composition, a narrative image, or a pictorial observation, you are looking at a direct descendant of his tradition.
(Caravaggio, by the way, was a direct stylistic descendant of Da Vinci, visually quoting him several times.)
> I really don't care whether you appreciate his art or not. The rest of the world seems to have reached a consensus on that.
I'm sorry if what I said about his painting was confusing. I consider da Vinci to be a great painter when judging from the reputation that he has with people knowledgeable about art. His paintings are simply not to my personal taste, mostly due to the expressionless faces (now Caravaggio, he has some amazing paintings). Whether you agree or not, I think you'll agree that art is a subjective thing (unlike science/math/engineering). The world also seems to have reached consensus that da Vinci was an amazing all round genius. This is demonstrably wrong, drawing into question the judgement of the world (also note the general belief in the existence of a god, and that the world is flat).
> This really is covered in most undergraduate history and philosophy courses. If you want a discrete list of Da Vinci's major works and his claim to fame, well, Wikipedia is your friend.
The list of science and inventions you gave contains nothing of significance except in painting. Whenever it is even remotely about math/science/engineering, it's mostly about his job as an illustrator, plus a couple of bogus inventions that neither got built nor work (though I'm sure you can find something trivial that he drew that actually worked -- if you draw enough things one of them is bound to work).
> Da Vinci defines the term Renaissance Man. He had his nose into everything. He was prior to the likes of Galileo and Newton and a departure from Aristotle and Plato.
If your point is that he came before them, so he had the time against him, then I'll say again: it's about the delta not about the absolute achievement. Also note that there were lots of proper geniuses LONG before him, like Pythagoras (math; ~600BC), Eratosthenes (math, measured the diameter of the Earth; ~250BC -- what's truly astonishing is that humanity not only forgot the diameter of the Earth, it actually believed that the Earth is flat!) and Euclid (math, physics; ~300BC). On a related note: Aristotle is not in that list; his works on physics are basically bogus, why people ascribe some kind of physics genius to him in history lessons is again beyond me. For amazing engineering just look at the pyramids and the Roman empire.
Lets simplify this: name one important contribution to science, math or engineering.