Natural Science - Year I
Unit 22: Leonardo da Vinci and Anatomy
Parents Guide for Unit 22
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For 2026: Please note that units are considered "under revision" until two weeks before the class date, and page content, web assignments, and exercises may change before that deadline.
Unit 22: Leonardo da Vinci and Modern Human Anatomy
Preparation
- History Web Lecture: The web lecture covers the interaction between art and science at the beginning of the Renaissance. The changing representation of natural objects had a great influence on how information was recorded and transmitted. Leonard engaged in the then illegal practice of performing dissection on human cadavers to learn more about human anatomy. The impact of his studies were limited, however, because only Leonardo's close friends were privileged to see his hand-drawn notebooks, which disappeared until the 19tyh century. Even if they had been available, it would not have been possible with the printing techniques available at the end of the 15th century to reproduce his drawings.
- Science Web Lecture: There is a lot of website reading to cover the three systems of the human body we discuss this week. However, students need to get the main functions of each system, and the main components. They'll learn the details later when they take biology!
- Homework: The mastery exercise attempts to make students think about the discussion questions below, so it goes a bit beyond the simple facts of da Vinci's life. The science homework provides drill on anatomical terms and organ systems, and is pretty straightforward.
- Discussion: We come back to several "theme" questions for the year with this topic.
- Is science a social activity involving the communication and review of an idea, or can someone like Leonardo da Vinci do science even if the results are never published?
- What social conventions did different scientists have to ignore in order to do their work?
- How are established scientific theories overthrown by new discoveries or theories?
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