Leonardo: The First Scientist, Michael White
I’ve found myself quite enjoying White’s biographies, and this is no exception. I think it’s difficult to argue that da Vinci wasn’t a scientist, when you look at the kinds of things he was interested in and the methodical way he went about it, including (as White points out) using the scientific method. I have to confess I picked up this biography after playing Assassin’s Creed II, and I did spend the entire time trying to work out how the chronology fit in with Ezio’s adventures…
White’s books are definitely very readable, and they seem to be sourced and well thought out. I’ll probably pick up other biographies written by White in the future; I enjoyed his one on Machiavelli, too.
He wasn’t the FIRST scientist, though – Roger Bacon was centuries earlier and if the stories about Archimedes are true you can go back another millennium before Bacon. I imagine there have been scientists throughout human history and back into pre-history.
There’s definitely discussion in the book of why he calls Leonardo the first scientist — I think he classes Bacon and Archimedes as ‘natural philosophers’ as opposed to following scientific method.
If the stories are true, both Roger Bacon and Archimedes deployed scientific method at times.