Thread Rating:
  • 1 Vote(s) - 5 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Davinci's mirror writing

#1
stryder Online
I was messing around earlier with writing in a mirror.  Namely looking at a mirror and trying to write the correct way round.  In any event it ended up in a conversation on Davinci's Mirror writing and I've actually come to a conclusion why he wrote in reverse.

I'd assume that Davinci had access to a lot of written works within the scribes library and he might of come across various works like thst of the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (wikipedia.org).  One of the things Roger was known for was some theories on optics and camera obscura (wikipedia.org).

It's possible therefore that Davinci actually used projection either for enlarging sketchs onto a canvas, or to explain his works to others.  One of the points of camera obscura though is that any image that is projected, is both upside-down and inversed.  So if any of his sketchbook works were to have notes accompanying a projection, they would have to be written in reverse.

I'd imagine a room of scribes duplicating scripture page by page by having one page projected at a time onto a canvas, and the room of scribes would duplicate that page.  Still it's only a theory... well at least until someone pieces together some evidence.
Reply
#2
C C Offline
I'd certainly need help like that to ever accomplish it effectively and ornately.

I didn't realize that mirror writing had been around since maybe the first millennium AD, or at least some precursors of it. Roots from that time maybe contributed to mystical affiliations.


Mirror writing: neurological reflections on an unusual phenomenon
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16963501/

ABSTRACT: Mirror writing is an unusual script, in which the writing runs in the opposite direction to normal, with individual letters reversed, so that it is most easily read using a mirror. This writing is seen in healthy individuals; it is also associated with various focal lesions that most commonly involve the left hemisphere, as well as with certain diffuse cerebral disorders.

Mirror writing is nearly always undertaken with the left hand, and left-handers, and those whose languages are written leftwards, have an unusual facility for this writing. Concerning possible underlying processes, the implications of using the left hand when writing are considered first.

Motor pathways that may be important, the surrogate model of bimanual mirror movements and the contribution of the corpus callosum are then discussed. The reasons why left-handed writing is mirrored, and the factors that tend to inhibit mirroring, are outlined.

After commenting on mirrored motor and visual engrams, the possibility that the right hemisphere may play an important part is entertained, and Leonardo da Vinci's unique, habitual mirror writing proves to be of unexpected relevance. Further investigations, ranging from epidemiological to functional imaging studies, may provide valuable insights into mirror writing.

- - - - - -

Mirror writing: my genes made me do it
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/...119739.htm

EXCERPT: . . . From this step, Mathewson found 10 genuine mirror writers. Given the newspaper had a readership of 65,000, he calculated that one in 6500 people could mirror write.

Mathewson then found that nearly half of the mirror-writers' children also had the trait, which seemed to be a sex-linked dominant condition.

This unusual pattern of inheritance via the X chromosome is also involved in the transmission of synaesthesia, a condition where people can taste sounds and hear colours...
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)