Leonardo da Vinci è universalmente considerato l'archetipo del genio: pittore, inventore, ingegnere, scienziato, nonché incarnazione dell'Uomo rinascimentale. Insuperato non solo per quanto realizzò in campi tanto diversi e numerosi, ma anche per le prospettive che ha aperto ai posteri. Questo libro è un'indagine su come 'funzionava' la sua mente eccezionale e ne spiega l'unicità a partire dai più recenti studi sulla specializzazione dei due emisferi cerebrali: le geniali innovazioni e gli straordinari successi raggiunti da Leonardo vengono dunque reinterpretati attraverso l'ottica delle neuroscienze. Ricorrendo anche agli appunti dello stesso Leonardo e alle testimonianze dei suoi contemporanei, l'autore lo ritrae come un personaggio storico davvero singolare, ma allo stesso tempo lo considera un modello da cui partire per esplorare i nostri processi creativi e cognitivi. Con uno stile chiaro e una godibile capacità di rappresentare inediti collegamenti tra ambiti in apparenza lontani, Shlain arriva a proporre affascinanti ipotesi sia sulle potenzialità della nostra mente sia sul futuro della specie umana.

Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.

Leonardo’s Brain uses Da Vinci as a starting point for an exploration of human creativity. With his lucid style, and his remarkable ability to discern connections in a wide range of fields, Shlain brings the listener into the world of history’s greatest mind.

Shlain asserts that Leonardo’s genius came from a unique creative ability that allowed him to understand and excel in a wide range of fields. From here Shlain jumps off and discusses the history and current research on human creativity that revolves around the right brain-left brain split. Most of us now know that there is a split between the right and the left side of the brain; the left primarily controls our rational mind, the right our emotions.

Shlain discusses the cutting edge research that is refining our understanding of the split brain model and deepening our knowledge about the nature of human creativity. There is more integration between the left and right brains than previously thought. Shlain argues that Leonardo was unique in human history for the degree of integration that he showed. He also speculates on whether or not the qualities of Leonardo’s brain and his creativity presage the future evolution of man.

Leonardo’s Brain integrates art, history, science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy uniting all of the ideas that Leonard Shlain studied and wrote about since the publication of the influential and bestsellingArt and Physics in 1991.

Art interprets the visible world. Physics charts its unseen workings. The two realms seem completely opposed. But consider that both strive to reveal truths for which there are no words––with physicists using the language of mathematics and artists using visual images. In Art & Physics, Leonard Shlain tracks their breakthroughs side by side throughout history to reveal an astonishing correlation of visions. From the classical Greek sculptors to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, and from Aristotle to Einstein, artists have foreshadowed the discoveries of scientists, such as when Monet and Cezanne intuited the coming upheaval in physics that Einstein would initiate. In this lively and colorful narrative, Leonard Shlain explores how artistic breakthroughs could have prefigured the visionary insights of physicists on so many occasions throughout history. Provicative and original, Art & Physics is a seamless integration of the romance of art and the drama of science––and an exhilarating history of ideas.

Making remarkable connections across a wide range of subjects including brain anatomy and function, anthropology, history, and religion, Shlain argues that, with the advent of literacy, the very act of reading an alphabet reinforced the brain's left hemisphere - linear, abstract, predominantly masculine at the expense of the right holistic, concrete, visual, feminine. This shift upset the balance between men and women, and initiated the disappearance of goddesses, the abhorrence of images, the decline of women's social and political status, and a long reign of patriarchy and misogyny.
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess tracks the correlations between the rise and fall of literacy and the changing status of women in society, mythology, and religion throughout European history, and in other cultures as well.
Shlain goes on to describe a colossal shift he calls the iconic revolution, now under way, that began in the nineteenth century: the return of the image. The invention of photography and the discovery of electromagnetism have brought us film, television, video, computers, advertising, graphics - and a shift from the dominance of the left hemisphere to reassertion of the right. Image information has gradually been superseding print information, and in the resulting social revolution women have benefited as society shifts to embrace feminine values.