Episode 1 — Leonardo da Vinci: The Courage to Be Curious

Episode transcript

Edmund: Can a flying machine exist on paper without ever leaving the ground? Welcome to the very first episode of Nexus Historia: Through the Time Portal. I’m Edmund. Each week, we’ll explore remarkable lives, surprising facts and questions worth discussing, with ideas you can explore through Nexus Historia. Step through the time portal with us, where AI brings historical voices to life for conversations we can only imagine. Today, we meet Leonardo da Vinci. He drew flapping-wing machines, but a compelling drawing and a working invention are not the same thing. So when does a curious idea become an invention? Leonardo, let’s begin with the work of looking.

Leonardo da Vinci: Let’s distinguish looking from examining. A drawing asks you to make choices. Which edge matters? Where does one shape meet another? What remains unclear? Drawing can slow an easy answer down. You need not call every mark a discovery. Sometimes its value is that it gives you a more exact question.

Edmund: Three memorable facts give us a useful portrait. First, Leonardo was born near Vinci in 1452 and worked as a painter in Florence by twenty: practical artistic work belongs near the beginning of this story. Second, his work crossed art, architecture, engineering and anatomy, so our separate subject labels can obscure connections. Third, he was left-handed, and his hatching commonly slopes from top left to bottom right. Even small marks help historians examine how drawings were made. Which detail gives us the strongest starting point for discussing curiosity?

Leonardo da Vinci: The crossing of subjects offers a productive starting point. Consider drawing as a shared tool rather than a separate subject. It can describe a visible surface, propose a structure or explore how parts might relate. Those are different tasks, yet each asks for attention to form. The hand matters too, but it should not become a magical signature. Left-handedness alone cannot establish who made a drawing. A useful clue becomes misleading when we ask it to settle the whole question.

Edmund: So that tiny detail opens an investigation rather than closing it. Leonardo’s drawings ranged from quick pen sketches to finished chalk studies. What changes when we stop treating every sheet as a polished masterpiece? Could a rough page sometimes teach us more?

Leonardo da Vinci: It can teach something different. A finished study may invite attention to what has been resolved. A quick sketch may leave relationships open. Neither deserves automatic superiority. For a learner, the useful exercise is to ask what kind of work a drawing performs. Does it record, compare, propose or refine? Drawing mattered to Leonardo as both artist and investigator. We can keep both roles visible without pretending that every unfinished line reveals a private thought.

Edmund: Now for the leap into the air. Leonardo’s notebooks combine sketches, ideas and working notes, often written from right to left. Among his designs are ornithopters: flying machines with flapping wings. It’s easy to see a striking design and announce that the future has arrived. But I want to challenge that leap. Isn’t a picture of a machine still a very long way from a machine that works?

Leonardo da Vinci: Yes. A design may identify a possibility without demonstrating performance. On paper, parts can be arranged convincingly while essential questions remain unanswered. What supplies the motion? What must the structure withstand? How would success be measured? These are questions we can ask of a proposed machine, not claims about tests Leonardo conducted. Some ideas may have faced limits in materials and technology. Admiring a proposal should sharpen those questions, not make them disappear.

Edmund: Here’s a striking cross-time contrast. The Science Museum commissioned models in 1929 and further models in the early 1950s, centuries after Leonardo’s lifetime. In our imagined conversation, what can those later models help us explore? And what can’t they establish? A physical object can feel so persuasive that we forget to ask when it was made.

Leonardo da Vinci: A later model can make spatial relationships easier to examine. It gives a viewer something more tangible than a page. But that tangibility belongs to the later construction. It does not prove Leonardo built a working machine. Keep the objects distinct: the drawing, the later interpretation and a demonstrated working invention. Each can be interesting. Confusing them creates a smoother story, but removes precisely the difficulty that makes this question worth discussing.

Edmund: Our Nexus Historia feature moment is Living Timelines. It lets users explore branching choices and consequences. That fits today’s distinction: a branch can help you examine what might change, but AI-generated alternatives are counterfactual, not historical evidence. Treat the branch as a question to investigate, not another event in Leonardo’s life.

Leonardo da Vinci: That distinction leaves room for imagination without surrendering the history. Before changing anything, name the actual starting point: drawings of flapping-wing machines, not proof of a working machine built by Leonardo. Then state what you are changing. Otherwise, a possibility can slip unnoticed into the factual story. The interesting part is not merely imagining success. It is identifying what success would require.

Edmund: Brief counterfactual, clearly labelled: what if a Leonardo-inspired design were explored using materials and technology unavailable to him? Would making something work under those altered conditions settle our original question? Or would it answer a new one? This is speculation, and success is not something we can assume.

Leonardo da Vinci: It would answer a new question: what can this interpreted design do under those changed conditions? It would not establish what Leonardo achieved in his own lifetime. That is the end of our counterfactual. Returning to history, the distinction remains: proposing a mechanism and demonstrating its operation are different achievements.

Edmund: Let’s bring that distinction back to Leonardo’s work beyond machines. The Adoration of the Magi remained unfinished. Many of his scientific investigations became widely known long after his death in 1519. That gives us a striking contrast between work left incomplete and work receiving wider attention later. Does our appetite for a complete masterpiece make us miss the value of an investigation? Or does celebrating curiosity risk excusing every unfinished result?

Leonardo da Vinci: Both dangers deserve attention. An unfinished work is not automatically a failure, but neither is incompletion proof of hidden greatness. We can value a question, a technique or a proposal while acknowledging what was not completed or demonstrated. That makes curiosity more demanding, not less. It asks for careful work without guaranteeing a triumphant ending. Leonardo’s range gives this conversation its energy; the differences between his kinds of work give it precision.

Edmund: Here’s an optional Nexus Historia next step: explore Living Timelines by naming one changed condition and reflecting on its consequences. For learners aged thirteen to seventeen, use Education’s teacher-managed route, with individual learner branches, reflections and submissions. Or simply discuss today’s question together: what should an idea demonstrate before we call it an invention?

Leonardo da Vinci: For a practical exercise, choose one design and make three headings: what is shown, what is proposed and what would need testing. Put each observation under the appropriate heading. If something could fit two headings, explain why. Then ask what additional evidence would change your assessment. You need not begin with a verdict about genius. Begin with a distinction. That gives admiration something useful to do.

Edmund: We began with wings on paper. We finish with a better way to look: separate the drawing, the proposal and the working result. That approach lets us appreciate Leonardo’s artistic practice and investigations without making every idea succeed. A sketch can matter because it helps frame a question; a working invention requires a different kind of demonstration. Take our discussion question into your next conversation: what should an idea demonstrate before we call it an invention? I’m Edmund. Thanks for joining Nexus Historia: Through the Time Portal, and follow the podcast to keep exploring history with us.

Related reading

• All podcast episodes

Historical sources

• www.rct.uk
• blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk
• www.getty.edu
• www.metmuseum.org