Many Centumes Ago, a ratio was discovered that is still used in the construction of buildings and arches. It seems the ratio 1.0/0.618 is somehow a mathematical fundamental of the universe. The Greeks, who first identified it, called it God’s golden mean. They thought it was some sort of expression of divine perfection. Maybe it is, but because the physical universe is “very good” rather than mathematically perfect, the “magic” ratio is always very closely approximate rather than absolute.
If you visited Athens and bought a guide book to the ancient ruins, it will have a plan of the great temple called the Parthenon, built by the Greeks 2,447 years ago. This architectural masterpiece is based upon the golden mean. So are the central building of the National Library of China in Beijing, the arches of the famous reading room of the U.S. Library of Congress, and the great arched entrance to the Saudi Arabian Library in Riyadh — just to mention three examples almost at random.
Another biological curiosity on the same theme is that, on average, the human body above the navel is 0.618 times the length below the navel.
The formula for the Fibonacci ratio, which is a basic principle of aesthetics and almost a “law” of nature, is as follows: the ratio of the smaller part to the larger part equals the ratio of the larger part to the whole. It has been said to be a way to “build quantity without sacrificing quality.”
As more is learned of God’s creation, more such simple but exquisite aspects of nature have been discovered. Maria Mitchell, America’s first woman professor of astronomy, has on her monument in New York these words: “Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.” Brian Greene, a young Harvard, Oxford, and Columbia scholar, and one of the newest “giants” of science, concluding his 1999 classic The Elegant Universe, writes, “During the last hundred years, the collective effort of numerous [scientists] has revealed some of nature’s best-kept secrets. And once revealed, these explanatory gems have opened vistas on a world we thought we knew, but whose splendor we had not even come close to imagining…There is a whole new mind-boggling world lying just beneath the surface of things as they are ordinarily experienced.”
It was recognition of such mathematical aspects of the universe that moved the great Jewish mathematician Abraham de Moivre in 1713 to marvel at “that Order which naturally results from Original Design.” His conclusion was, “If we blind not ourselves with metaphysical dust we shall be led by a short and obvious way to the acknowledgment of the great Maker and Governor of all.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One