This Article: (8 Pages)
- 1. Honey Bees challenge Evolution
- 2. Bees are Irreducibly Complex
- 3. Non-Reducible Interdependence
- 4. Arguments for Intelligent Design
- 5. Intelligent Design Supports a... Creator's Existence
- 6. Design and Nature: by a qualified... Architect
- 7. The Golden Ratio in Plants
- 8. The Golden Ratio an argument for... design in nature
6) Design and Nature: by a qualified Architect
In my Architecture Course I learnt about the history of design theories and, most importantly, about the almost mystical 'Golden Proportion'. This is a rectangle where one side is a ratio to the other of 1 as to 1.618......(approximately). This geometrical proportion is supposed to look beautiful to the majority of the population. We carried out studies of classical buildings, scribing the approximate proportion on facades and designing our own facade. The point of the exercise was to teach us how to actively use our intellect to make beautiful objects using laws. The repetition of the proportion was to make buildings 'complete', where the parts are in the same proportion to the whole and exhibit self similarity. This technique of 'self-similarity' is recognised as a technique for producing structures that are generally more pleasing to the majority of the population. It is agreed by architects that their role is to incorporate beauty in a building as if it was a function, often expressed as "commodity, firmness and delight" (Turan 1990).
The Golden Ratio
According to Livio (2002) in his book The Golden Ratio this ratio was discovered by the Greek mathematician Hippasus of Metapontum in the 5th century BC who was a a follower of Pythagoras. It is a ratio that cannot be expressed as a simple fraction. In fact, to millions of decimal places it never repeats. For the Pythagoreans, and, later Euclid in his Elements written around 300BC, the golden ratio was merely an oddity, discovered as a result of their study of the geometry of the pentagram.
As an aside Pythagoras gave us the word 'philosophy' and proposed the idea of the immortal soul. It is against this teaching Paul speaks when he writes “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ”. Col 2:8 KJV. Paul's reference to 'rudiments' or 'elements' of the world truly captures the Pythagorean interest in an idealised geometry expressing the “atoms” or basic building blocks of the world. Modern science has shown their theories were incorrect, through better instrumentation, not necessarily through more correct theories.
The golden ratio was found more recently to be the ratio of two Fibonacci numbers. The Fibonacci sequence is 1,1,2,3,5,8,13... where each number is the sum of the two previous numbers. The higher up the series, the closer the ratio of the two numbers approximates the Golden Ratio.
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