This Is Why Leonardo da Vinci’s Genius Can’t Be Replicated in the 21st Century

Leonardo da Vinci Was A Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Scientist (among many other diverse but cool things). But Why His Multidisciplinary Genius Is Impossible to Replicate In Today’s World?

What makes a genius? Intellect, creativity, a high IQ or good grades at school? Answers may differ depending on who you ask, but what we can all agree to is that the artist, architect, scientist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, certainly was one of the greatest geniuses in history.

According to the dictionary, a genius is defined as an exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability, an intelligent person or one with exceptional skill in a particular area of activity. And Leonardo da Vinci was not only a genius, but a multidisciplinary one–he was into everything and excelled at everything, like that professor’s favorite class mate that always got the best grades on absolutely all subjects. He’s known worldwide for his painting (who doesn’t know about the iconic Mona Lisa?), anatomy (here we’re all picturing the drawing of a curly hair man inside a perfect circle and square, four arms and four legs), sculpture or architecture, and he also did contribute to aerodynamics (hello? This man lived in the 15^th century and still managed to design the first helicopter!), hydraulics, poetry, engineering, botany and cooking. That we know of. If he tried out something like beekeeping, we have no record of it, but he probably would have done that wonderfully.

Mostly self-educated, he filled dozens of notebooks with inventions, observations and theories about pursuits from aeronautics to human anatomy. His combination of intellect and imagination allowed him to create, at least on paper, such inventions.

There are a couple of well-researched arguments to why Leonardo da Vinci´s genius can´t be replicated by anyone in today’s world–even by people with his same IQ or higher. Because da Vinci’s lasting impact on all the disciplines he added knowledge and research to, both art and science, is not only about intellect or creativity (although that’s a big part and he has all the credit for what he did). It’s about the time period in which he had lived (the Renaissance of the 15^th century) as well as the place (the north of Italy) which ultimately made a genius like da Vinci stand out on absolutely everything he did.

And he was not the only genius who benefited from the historical period in which he lived. When we think about the Renaissance period in Italy, most likely these three names would be the first ones to pop into our heads: Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci –three true Renaissance masters. The three of them had something in common, beyond talent and artistic ability – they were born in the right place and at the right time. They had a favorable context to develop their skills.

We live in what many are starting to name “the information era”. Knowledge is everywhere. Is it so, that we need to integrate centuries of studies related to a specific field to be able to truly learn it and contribute to it. Da Vinci did not have the same problem: there was little to no knowledge in many of the fields to which he contributed to. Someone might be born a genius (there sure are plenty in the 21^st century), but your historical context and location is what defined and determined that da Vinci excelled in almost every intellectual discipline at a time, and geniuses today have to chose one–maximum two–disciplines to devote their time and brains.