- Joined
- Apr 24, 2004
- Messages
- 840
Howdy,
OK, art students, biologists, fern and shell collectors, people who've read the Da Vinci code, architects, car enthusiasts with a penchant for the BMW Z8 roadster and anyone who's browsed a popular science mag over the last ten years/watched the news/read a book on art history/studied religion or the human body - you may well be aware of a number called the Golden Ratio, or the Divine Proportion, or, as it appears on a calculator, 1.618. For those of you who aren't aware of it, it's derived from the Fibonacci sequence (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21... adding the previous two integers together to get the next) as the ratio between the numbers and, seemingly miraculously, pops up in nature quite a lot. It's the ratio of the upper arm to the forearm and hand in the human body, the ration of finger joint to finger joint, head to toe and head to navel, and so on. It's present in the spirals of a shell, the spiral of a sunflower's seeds, the bodily structure of a dolphin, George Clooney's face and, it seems, anywhere where there's curvature and beauty in nature at all. A thorough overview (if a little bit "woo woo" in tone) can be found here.
Now, personally, I've always considered the golden ratio to be a nice little quirk of mathematics and biology which isn't always 100% accurate but is close enough to be indicative of an evolutionary slide towards a certain degree of curvature in nature which is more efficient than others. Holding it up as proof of intelligent design seems a little wrong-headed, and it's obvious that things which supposedly display the Golden Ratio don't always have 1.618 as an exact proportion - close enough, however, is good enough in a lot of instances.
The thing which has been puzzling me recently in relation to this is the presence of the bellybutton in the analysis of the Golden Ratio and the human body. It seems plausible that a certain, most efficient ratio would develop where the human body was to curve and move, but we don't curve and move around our bellybutons. More often than not, people who analyse the body and pull out proportions of 1.618 state that it's to do with the fact that navel and elbows are on the same horizontal level, but I've just been to check this out in the mirror and my elbows are a good two inches above my bellybutton (and no, I don't have Tyrannosaurus Rex arms or a big drooping tummy, I think I'm in reasonable proportion). However, look at any examination of where the human form shows a ratio of 1.618 and the position of the navel in relation to the head and the feet is one of the first things to be mentioned.
Why is this? Bear in mind that the navel is just the point at which the umbilical cord attaches to the human body, independent of the skeletal structure. Do we like to think that, during gestation, the whole human form is constructed in perfect formation around the point from which it starts to appear? Or, when people are analysing this, do they like to tie the harmony of the skeleton back to the more traditionally more "beautiful" aspects of life such as birth, motherhood, etc? Perhaps the bellybutton has appeared there, ascribing to the Golden Ratio as it does, so as to be more aesthetically pleasing and, well, attractive. Or perhaps it's all a load of old tosh and an example of people crowbarring maths into nature in much the same way as a small child will attempt to ram a square peg into a dog's ear.
You decide!
OK, art students, biologists, fern and shell collectors, people who've read the Da Vinci code, architects, car enthusiasts with a penchant for the BMW Z8 roadster and anyone who's browsed a popular science mag over the last ten years/watched the news/read a book on art history/studied religion or the human body - you may well be aware of a number called the Golden Ratio, or the Divine Proportion, or, as it appears on a calculator, 1.618. For those of you who aren't aware of it, it's derived from the Fibonacci sequence (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21... adding the previous two integers together to get the next) as the ratio between the numbers and, seemingly miraculously, pops up in nature quite a lot. It's the ratio of the upper arm to the forearm and hand in the human body, the ration of finger joint to finger joint, head to toe and head to navel, and so on. It's present in the spirals of a shell, the spiral of a sunflower's seeds, the bodily structure of a dolphin, George Clooney's face and, it seems, anywhere where there's curvature and beauty in nature at all. A thorough overview (if a little bit "woo woo" in tone) can be found here.
Now, personally, I've always considered the golden ratio to be a nice little quirk of mathematics and biology which isn't always 100% accurate but is close enough to be indicative of an evolutionary slide towards a certain degree of curvature in nature which is more efficient than others. Holding it up as proof of intelligent design seems a little wrong-headed, and it's obvious that things which supposedly display the Golden Ratio don't always have 1.618 as an exact proportion - close enough, however, is good enough in a lot of instances.
The thing which has been puzzling me recently in relation to this is the presence of the bellybutton in the analysis of the Golden Ratio and the human body. It seems plausible that a certain, most efficient ratio would develop where the human body was to curve and move, but we don't curve and move around our bellybutons. More often than not, people who analyse the body and pull out proportions of 1.618 state that it's to do with the fact that navel and elbows are on the same horizontal level, but I've just been to check this out in the mirror and my elbows are a good two inches above my bellybutton (and no, I don't have Tyrannosaurus Rex arms or a big drooping tummy, I think I'm in reasonable proportion). However, look at any examination of where the human form shows a ratio of 1.618 and the position of the navel in relation to the head and the feet is one of the first things to be mentioned.
Why is this? Bear in mind that the navel is just the point at which the umbilical cord attaches to the human body, independent of the skeletal structure. Do we like to think that, during gestation, the whole human form is constructed in perfect formation around the point from which it starts to appear? Or, when people are analysing this, do they like to tie the harmony of the skeleton back to the more traditionally more "beautiful" aspects of life such as birth, motherhood, etc? Perhaps the bellybutton has appeared there, ascribing to the Golden Ratio as it does, so as to be more aesthetically pleasing and, well, attractive. Or perhaps it's all a load of old tosh and an example of people crowbarring maths into nature in much the same way as a small child will attempt to ram a square peg into a dog's ear.
You decide!
)
