Topic awaiting preservation: great site about goldern ratio etc

http://www.goldennumber.net/

fascinating.

Interesting site for sure.

But some of the information there is 'wrong', or at least very biased. Many of the places that he manages to find connections to the golden ratio (especially in architecture) are open to doubt, even though he states it as facts. The first thing to note is that even you find proportions that match phi it doesn't mean that phi was used while making the building. One example is the Great Pyramid and the other pyramids. The presence of phi is rather clear there, but it has been proven (as good as one can when something is that old) that those who made it didn't know anything about the golden ratio. Another example is the Parthenon, where the results vary greatly depending on where on the building you take your measures from.

From what I've read Pythagoras (570 B.C) was the first person to acctually know what the golden ratio was and how it might be used to design various objects. For one thing it was used to design the pentagram/~gon that the Pythagoreans used as their symbol. The first certain place that the golden ratio is mentioned by name is during the Rennesance. This is the first time that we know for sure that the golden ratio (or divine proportion as they called it) inspired and was used by artists.

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 02-25-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 02-26-2004).]

the golden section or golden mean or whatever is quite facinating.

I did a large term paper for grad school on a piece by Edgard Varese (Deserts) that had one section of the paper devoted to the golden mean in this piece. It was kind of interesting. Varese's music, if you are not familiar with it is based on intervalic formulas (the distance from one pitch to the next). It was dead on the money too. At measure 157, I believe, the interval from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch was 157 steps.

I don't doubt for one second that Varese did this on purpose. It would be his style. As for some of the other music, I think I may have been more of coinsidence than anything.

Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~

And don't forget another of our esteemed colleagues who owns a site dedicated to the golden mean.
http://www.thegoldenmean.com

:::11oh1:::

Ven: DId you mean the Parthenon (sp?) not the Pantheon?

Yes, I did mean the Parthenon, thanks for spotting it. Spelling corrected in the first post as well.

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

Thanks Krets!

Veneficuz - I assume you have read Mario Livio's book: "The Golden Ratio - the Story of the World's Most Astonishing Number." If not, I would warmly recommend it to you and to anyone else interested in the topic. What a terrific exploration of the concept!