Scientific Politics or Political Science?

Could the two greatest figures of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli, have worked together? In an upcoming book Machiavelli, Leonardo,and the Science of Power, government professor Roger Masters is out to prove not only that the two were friends but also that this relationship had great implications for modernity.

"Historians say Machiavelli is the first modern, the first scientific thinker, and so on," says Masters. "But when you look at the details, the novelty seems to lie in his notion that you can use science to control natural outcomes. He seems to have gotten that by working with Leonardo."

Masters also wants his book to show that, despite the claims of deconstructionist and other post-modernist scholars, an author's original intention can and must be discovered through his words. "You have to go back in history to prove you've got the writer's meaning right, and then forward in contemporary science to find out whether it's true," Masters says. "And that's a very demanding way to look at political theory. Most theorists don't do that; most treat a philosopher like a poet."

Lennie da Vinci thoughtNick Machiavelli was aprince of a guy.