Like Ficino and Giordano Bruno, da Vinci imagined Earth or even the universe as a living creature, an organism. For Leonardo, the human body was “a lesser world,” a miniature embodiment of the entire universe: “As man has within himself bones as a stay and framework for the flesh, so the world has the rocks that are the supports of the earth. As man has within him a pool of blood wherein the lungs as he breathes expand and contract, so the body of the earth has its ocean.”16 To him “every whole is greater than the part,” while “the whole [still is present] in every smallest part”: “each in all
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