Let’s ask Leonardo

Today's trivia question to prepare you for the “Clash of Civilizations”.
Where was Leonardo da Vinci born?
Click here and Scoll down to "Interests" for the answer.

Leonardo da Vinci had theory about geography. He thought that the earth was a sort of reflection of man (or maybe vice versa). He called the scheme microcosm and macrocosm (or maybe vice versa). The idea went way, way back to 500 BC and was rediscovered by Leonardo, among others, during the Renaissance. This is why I illustrate this little blog entry with Mona Lisa. Leonardo was subtly illustrating the microcosm / macrocosm (hint: look at the hair and the river but if you spend some time with her you will see a lot more). Please, click on Mona to see a big detailed version.

Leonardo was no armchair philosopher. Although he loved the idea of the idea, he needed to examine the evidence. This is not the appropriate place get too lost in the truly amazing mind of Leonardo, so suffice it to say that while studying the Earth to prove his theory he came upon fossils of shellfish in the mountains. At that time there were 2 theories of the origin of shellfish fossils way up above and way far away from the ocean.

One school believed that it was evidence of the great biblical deluge. You know, Noah, the Ark, 40 days and 40 nights. How else could one explain evidence of ocean life on a mountaintop hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean? This school of thought, of course, based this belief on the text of the bible. So we could say that they had a fundamental fish to fry.

The “modern” school thought that the rock spontaneously formed crystalline structures that were the stone version of these shellfish. This school had their own strange fish to fry in that they had their own odd philosophical ideas that this spontaneous generation theory supported.

Leonardo, being the kind of guy that he was, decided to test all three theories against the evidence. He was able to quickly refute the deluge theory on several grounds. One of several pieces of evidence was that the fossil sea life occurred in many layers with a variety of species and that some of the layers were of intact joined shells indicating that these fossils were buried alive over a very long period of time. The spontaneous generation theory was refuted by several pieces of evidence, one bit being that some of the layers were composed of well-worn disjoined shells that would be consistent with a beach with its shell deposits being buried.

Oh, and by the way, he didn’t find much to support his pet microcosm / macrocosm theory either.

Of course this little discussion brings us to the present day in Knox, Indiana. There are a lot of so-called Creationists in and about Knox. They have their theory about fossils also. Coincidentally their theory is the great biblical deluge theory pretty much intact over these many years. One of the pieces of evidence that they find is exactly the same evidence that Leonardo used to disprove the spontaneous generation theory. Some of these layers of fossilized sea life appear as a jumble of disjointed shells just like they had been washed up on the beach, presumably during the great flood. Of course, that explains how these seashells got gathered up hundreds of miles from and thousands of feet above the present ocean. Brilliant!

There are members of our school board that want the creationist theory taught “alongside” evolutionary theory.

I say, “Fine!” Let’s ask Leonardo.