Labels:text | screenshot | font OCR: great usefulness, for it teaches how to bend rivers and avoid the ruins of the places percussed by them." B But obstacles are just part of Leonardo's focus, part of a broader discussion on the control of rivers. The outline for his proposed book on water C given here indicates, as does the rest of the manuscript, that Leonardo intended to define the science of water as a deductive one based on first principles and descending from the general to the specific.