SOURCE: “Leonardo da Vinci as Philosopher,” in The Resources of Leonardo da Vinci: Papers Delivered at Southern Illinois University, November 12th-15th, 1952, edited by George Kimball Plochmann, Carbondale, 1953, pp. 28-39.

In the following essay, Plochmann asserts that, despite the fragmented nature of Leonardo's writings, his work was informed by a philosophical system. The critic concedes, however, that Leonardo failed to provide connections between his distinct areas of study, and that his philosophy lacked a “single guiding principle.”

Just as men who see the tattered remains of The Last Supper feel certain that behind its hopeless flakes was once a dominant form, so may readers of the Notebooks be sure that looming over the miscellany is an integral system of ideas in which part with part make a catena, and in which every part is an intimate subdivision of an articulated whole. The philosophical interpretation of Leonardo should exhibit...