Discussion #3 - Patterns of Beauty in Nature and Art

Patterns of Beauty in Nature and ArtWhat do the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon, and a common pinecone have in common? They all conform to a specific mathematical ration, called the “Golden Ratio,” that has fascinated the world’s greatest thinkers for millennia. The Golden Ration, also referred to as the “Divine Proportion” has an intimate and longstanding relationship between beauty, art and math.
One of the easiest ways to define the Golden Ratio is through the famous sequence of numbers named after the mathematician Fibonacci. See if you can identify the pattern in the following set of numbers: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34… Each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. When you divide any of the numbers (after the first few) by the one before it, you get roughly the same number (about 1.6 or Phi ɸ), and the value becomes increasingly refined as the numbers get larger.
This “golden” proportion, when applied visually, creates specific kinds of rectangles and spirals whose precise shapes we find all over the place in nature. Cones, shells and flowers, for example, typically illustrate the pattern in the elegant arrangement of their features. The uncanny recurrence of the ration in nature, and its mysterious connection with beauty, has inspired many artists, from Dali to the architects of the Great Pyramids, to employ it in their own composition.

Find an image or object in nature that displays the “Golden Proportions” and explain why you think it would be considered beautiful.