Were the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci?
Leonardo is most respected for his art, breadth and depth of interests and the concepts which he introduced or documented. His real inventions (things made at the time) are not widely known. He contributed to understanding and the link below gives some examples like plate tectonics. There is a section on inventions further down the page. It took a few hundred years before many of his ideas were feasible. That does not reduce the creativity – rather shows its success. Perhaps you can say he was able to visualize things that challenged others to make them, just like science fiction gives people a glimpse of what might be. This is true creativity. I wouldn’t say they violated physics principles, more likely were incomplete or impractical designs in some cases. I wouldn’t say he was just putting down fanciful ideas either. He studied many of these things in depth, like with flight he was aware that flies steer with their feet. How many know that even today? His flying machine was based on
