AN OLD QUESTION ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF THE COSMOS |
Pythagoras, who said "all is number" invented the word cosmos, meaning order and harmony in opposition to chaos. This idea of beauty and order in the cosmos (root for cosmetic) was not new. Centuries before, Solomon wrote: "He has made everything beautiful in its time...”
Beauty is everywhere and we will try to find some patterns, some numbers, some mathematical functions repeating like fractals in all kind of beauty.
Beauty is everywhere and we will try to find some patterns, some numbers, some mathematical functions repeating like fractals in all kind of beauty.
PHI...BONACCI
A proportion will help us in our quest to understand the relationship between beauty and numbers, a certain ratio which is recurrent in all animal, vegetal and mineral kingdoms.
Kepler chose to name it "one of the most precious jewels". Many call it "the golden ratio". In Tuscany, the mathematician Pacioli preferred the title "divine proportion" for his book illustrated by another Tuscan, Leonardo da Vinci. However, when we talk about this ratio, it is the name of a third Tuscan, which is generally remembered, Fibonacci.
Now think, this mathematician from Pisa is the one who helped Europe to leave the Roman calculation for the actual system. However, we remember his name in connection with something much more trivial, a sequence of numbers that he studied to model the growth of rabbits. In this sequence a number is the sum of the previous two. 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13, 8 + 13 = 21, 34, 55, 89, 144
Kepler chose to name it "one of the most precious jewels". Many call it "the golden ratio". In Tuscany, the mathematician Pacioli preferred the title "divine proportion" for his book illustrated by another Tuscan, Leonardo da Vinci. However, when we talk about this ratio, it is the name of a third Tuscan, which is generally remembered, Fibonacci.
Now think, this mathematician from Pisa is the one who helped Europe to leave the Roman calculation for the actual system. However, we remember his name in connection with something much more trivial, a sequence of numbers that he studied to model the growth of rabbits. In this sequence a number is the sum of the previous two. 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13, 8 + 13 = 21, 34, 55, 89, 144
His model was not even accurate. However, if you do an Internet search with “Fibonacci”, it will give you millions of pages related to the sequence 1,2,3,5,8…. How come? In relation to it you will also find so many names: Golden rule, G. number, G. means, G. rectangle, G. triangle, Fibonacci spiral, Phi, tau… Do you think a simple number could grow through ages and wear so many names? Pi is so important and it is called… Pi. Let us follow this rabbit sequence and look where it goes to find out why it is so special.
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Donald Duck is leading us in the land of mathmagics, Pythagoras and the golden mean.
Fibonacci sequence and the construction of the golden mean
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