This laconic, aporetic insertion appears to be but a marginal rumination, and was largely ignored or understudied in Leonardo research. [6] The disregard for it, however, is both weighty and symptomatic, since it draws its validity, and validates in return, conservative assumptions on what is and what is not relevant to the history and historiography of science. Grounded in these certitudes, it also reflects limiting and anachronistic norms of interpretation in this particular site of proficiency. But in the history of Leonardo studies, this approach has also yielded a paradoxical malaise.

On the one hand, it had to consider as a failing his diffused way of handling topics and arguments. Such a stance amounts to distrusting the salient character of his page-configurations, namely, his fragmented parataxis. [7] On this base, prevalent readings have indeed tended to dodge the idea that Leonardo’s gran salti, as he himself acknowledged it, can harbor a texture of coherent, submerged meaning.