[Ads-l] Adage: Everything is connected to everything else

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

I received a request to explore the saying in the subject line. This
notion probably occurred to the primordial philosopher, but quotation
research is largely restricted to the written record.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., John Muir, Jean
Piaget, and Barry Commoner all employed versions of this saying.

Here is a link to the Quote Investigator article.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/03/31/connected/

Here is an English translation of a pertinent passage in Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing's "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" (1769).

[Begin excerpt]
In nature everything is connected, everything is interwoven,
everything changes with everything, everything merges from one into
another.
[End excerpt]

The adage has often been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, but I only
found citations for this linkage in recent decades.

There is a Google snippet match for Leonardo da Vinci with a 1989
date, but WorldCat expresses uncertainty about this year, and I have
not verified the information with scans or hardcopy.

[ref] 1989, Millennium: Towards Tomorrow's Society by Francis Kinsman,
Quote Page 223, W. H. Allen Company, London. (This citation has not
been fully verified; this data is based on a snippet match in Google
Books together with metadata from WorldCat) [/ref]

[Begin excerpt]
As the true Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci said: ‘To develop a
complete mind—study the science of art; study the art of science;
learn how to “see”; realise that everything connects to everything
else’.
[End excerpt]

Verification of the above citation or an earlier citation for Da Vinci
would be helpful.

Feedback welcome,
Garson

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org