What Da Vinci did is common knowledge as well. I can't help that you don't seem to value it. Sorry. Most of the world seems to disagree with you on this.

You don't offer to explain in detail what Newton did; but don't bother on my account. In my spare time I'm an amateur astronomer. I've written 3 body force simulation software for projects (my brother, who worked at JPL in the '70s wrote the software that calculated the orbiter orbital insertion engine burn.) I've measured Jupiter's mass with nothing but a telescope, a reticle eyepiece and a hand held calculator. My results were lousy, I learned a lot and got some real, dirty hands appreciation for the efforts of the pioneers of modern science.

You dismiss this area of human technology like it is superficial and not worthy of intellectual respect.

If you want an idea of what Da Vinci's "delta" was, go back and look at that portrait I spoke of, the one I tried unsuccessfully to copy, and compare it to any previous portrait. Lady with an Ermine is considered by many to be the first modern portrait. I don't mean for you to imagine what a previous work might have been like, if you really want to understand, do a little work and find one and seriously compare the two.

Look at the use of space in that portrait. Utterly unlike anything before it. The sense of depth, the lighting, the framing.

It's cinematic. 500 years before the camera.

(There is a lot of speculation about Renaissance artists using optical aids in their work. If you are interested in that, the key search terms are Camera Obscura and Camera Lucida.)

I knew when I wrote the previous post you were unlikely to be able really comprehend what I'm talking about. I find that only people who've actually seriously taken a pencil or brush in their hands and actually tried to make a picture, a real sustained effort, not just a lark, can really understand what a leap in thought and in presentation the Renaissance artists brought about.

There was a similar effect in the history of motion pictures. Look at movies made pre-D.W. Griffith (there are other film makers involved in this transformation, but this is getting long winded and divergent enough). They are like stage plays. Audiences had no problem with them. Then suddenly, we start to see visual tools transform the medium. Audiences were shocked and often unable to follow. It was a new, non-linear visual language.

Modern audiences, who've grown up with this language have no problem and are usually totally unaware of this. In fact when you try to show a really old movie to a modern audience it often drives them nuts. It's like trying to get a twelve year old to sit through a classically presented Shakespeare production. Also, I'm old enough, just barely, to have known people who were adults before the development of modern cinema. Many of them simply couldn't follow the story. It was too abstract and made too many assumptions.

Leonard was one of the pioneers not only of modern visual synthesis, but of modern observational method. Most intellectuals were Aristotelian. Da Vinci was in there cutting up bodies to see for himself. He made copious notes on bird flight; from observations. His flying machine drawings were some of the first serious, methodical efforts at the idea. Seems obvious now. Now that someone's done it.

This approach was not common practice at the time, it was considered a low brow, vulgar approach. Da Vinci could create an organized, methodic, proportional, visualization of an idea. In three dimensions. Backed with some actual, honest observational under pinnings.

That was new.

True Da Vinci wasn't much of an experimentalist, though the local prince found his practical output worth keeping him on the payroll; Leonardo was't a scientist or engineer in the modern sense. There weren't any yet. Fortunately another Florentine, a couple of generations later, would make some small advances in that department...

FWIW, Paul Graham has some very good essays concerning painting and its relationship to technical thought. I highly recommend them. My serious advice to anyone who wants to be a designer of any kind is to learn to draw a bit. Or a lot.