Leonardo da Vinci and the Arundel Code

We can findt hese intuitions and discoveries in one of Leonardo da Vinci’s codes. In Disputa pro e contra le leggi di natura (code Arundel;1478-1518)  he writes:

 “Nature, being eager and taking pleasure in creating and making lives and forms over and over again, because it knows they are an increasing of its earthly matter, is willing and faster in creating than time in using up and so it ordered many animals should become food to one another and this not satisfying such a desire, it often gives off a kind of poisonous and pestiferous vapour and a continuous plague over the great reproducing and flocking together of animals, and above all over men who increase so much because other animals don’t make them their food and once causes are taken away, effects will fail”.

What do these words mean? Leonardo predicted certain scientific facts before they were explained by modern scientists at the beginning and the second half of the last century.

Now we analyze the first part of the sentence of Leonardo Da Vinci:

“Nature, being eager and taking pleasure in creating and making lives and forms over and over again, because it knows they are an increasing of its earthly matter, is willing and faster in creating than time in using up

Leonardo defines Nature in the original text with the adjective “vaga”. The etymologic dictionary says that “vaga” comes from the Latin word “vagus“, wandering and, in a figurative meaning, irresolute, inconstant, fickle. It also says that vaga means eagerwhich is enthusiastic. This isavery poetic way to anticipate and highlight his next words “taking pleasure“.

Using the verb “knows” and the adjective “willing“Leonardogives nature a life  and intelligence that let us understand that for Leonardo da Vinci, “God is nature itself with all its laws. All the elements of nature including viruses are parts of its intelligence. This is why we have given the text, homonymous of the blog, the title “the Intelligent Virus“.

So, we have explained that for Leonardo God is nature itself with all its laws.  Now let’sexamine the incredible meaning of that following sentence “it is willing and faster in creating than time in using up“. Practically Leonardo means: in animal populations, and particularly in man, when two beings of different sex mate, they produce, on average, two or more offspring; then in turn, the offspring mate and produce two or more offspring. Before the ancestors (animals or man), have died out, four or more creatures of the same species are produced. This causes a natural

Tendencyfor any animal species to increase. This law was stated by David Lack with his bookThe natural regulation of animal number  published in New York in 1931.  While Lack referred to animals, Leonardo understood that this law was overall for man, which I will explain later.

So, Leonardo’s words “time in using up” are full of meanings. One of these meanings is the anticipationofDavid Lack’s discovery in 1931 where Lackstatesthebirthrate, in animals, is superior to the mortality rate, therefore, there is a natural tendency to have an increase in every animal species.  Incredibly, many years before, in 1500, Leonardo had already understood this principle. However, he understood something more, that this applied not only to animals but also man.

Leonardo’s discovery is in reality a deeply scientific meaning of the wordsin the Bible “go forth and multiply“,

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now analyze the second part of Leonardo’s sentence:“…and so it ordered many animals should become food to one another and this not satisfying such a desire, it often gives off a kind of poisonous and pestiferous vapour and a continuous plague over the great reproducing and flocking together of animals, and above all over men who increase so much because other animals don’t make them their food and once causes are taken away, effects will fail”

What do the next words of Leonardo mean? “and so it ordered many animals should become food to one another“This means that nature like a god searches to avoid the overpopulation of animals and overall man by stipulating that they eat each other. Yet again Leonardo anticipates another scientific law,  the Law of Volterra in 1926 which asserts a great correlation between the number of predators and respective preys. But, Leonardo had understood that there was a time when man this law applied to man too.

The regulation of the number of animal populations, based on the predator and prey system of the Italian mathematicianVolterra in 1926., isn’t enough, particularly, for man who increase a lot because other animals don’t feed on them. So, Leonardo had also understood the consequences for man of the disappearance of the great predators of the past. Some people believe that the great predators of the past had left a memory in the collective unconscious of man. For me,talesabout the bad wolf which eats up Red Hood Riding Hood and her grandmother  but after is killed by the hunter are memories of the great predators which in the past ate man.

Alsothebig dinosaurs,represented in the shape of dragons, are a memory of the great predators of man

How could Leonardo have understood, and what’s more anticipated early in the 1500’sthe problem of human overpopulation?  This question simply leaves me breathless.

Let’s return to his words

And this not satisfying such a desire:  Leonardo realized that the predator-prey system was no longer sufficient in regulating the number of human beings.So Leonardo says “nature (it) often gives off a kind of poisonous and pestiferous vapors and a continuous plague over the great increasing and flocking together of animals and above all men who increase so much. With these words Leonardo anticipates the function of epidemics as regulators of the human population

In the present time scientists started speaking about the function of epidemics as regulators of the human population only in1925with Elton’s work Plagues and the regulation of numbers in wild mammals. But only in 1993 the concept of an ecologic function of viruses and bacteria, as a regulation of human population, became something universally accepted with May’s workEcology and evolution of host-virus association published in Stephen S. Morse’s famous book Emerging Viruses.

What amazes me more is that, when Leonardo wrote “Disputa pro e contra la legge di natura“, nobody knew about the existence of bacteria and viruses. The

theory of germs as a cause of infectious diseases was proposed by GirolamoFracastoro only in 1546 and it took more than another three hundred years before this theory was universally accepted..

Finally, that phrase with which Leonardo explains the laws of nature “because other animals don’t make them their food and once causes are taken away, effects will fail” incredibly coincide with the basis of Buddhist philosophy-religion that is  “the cause and effect law”.

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I conclude with a curiosity; that Leonardo was considered a great philosopher confirms it even Benvenuto Cellini. To express this opinion to Cellini was the king of France, Francis I, at whose court Leonardo spent the last years of his life

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Lack David FRS The natural regulation of animal number.Pgg 409-48 New York 1931.

Volterra V. Variations and fluctuations in the number of individuals in animal species living together.MemAccad.Naz. Lincei (6)2:31-113.  1926 Edited again in Chapman RN, Animal Ecology.Pgg 409-48 New York 1931.

Elton C S, Plagues and the regulation of numbers in wild mammals. J Hyg24(2):138  163 London 1925

May R M Ecology and evolution of host-virus association. Pgg. 58-67 in Emerging Viruses. Edited by Stephen S. Morse. Oxford University Press 1993

The meaning of the word Virus was originally “foul secretion” as Lucretius handed down to us, or “poisonus fluid” according to Virgil.Aulo Cornelius Celsus was among the first to make use of this word in case of infectious diseases: in his De Re Medica(Med. XXVII,1), while telling about rabies, he asserts the dog bite contains some viruses: ” omnisautemferemorsumhabetquoddam virus” obviously in the meaning of poison.(I° cent.B.C.-I° cen. A.D.).

The existence of microorganims had been sensed by Marco TerenzioVarroneReatino (116 B.C.-27 B.C. ), a great Roman scholar who tells about little animals invisible to the naked eye which, through the air, enter the body from the mouth and the nostrils and cause serious diseasescrescentanimaliaquaedamminuta, quae non possunt oculi  consequi, et per aeraintus in corpus per os ac nares 

Perveniuntatquedifficilesefficientmorbos. This makes me think that also Marco TerenzioVarrone must be felt really alone when he tried to explain his contemporaries the existence of these microorganisms.