There is order in chaos, there is pattern in randomness. Scientists and mathematicians are some of the people who try to coax those patterns in a universe more keen to keep its secrets.
That order is more so seen in some numerical patterns. There's the seemingly boggling Pi (3.141....) that is seemingly endless after the decimal point. There's the unappreciated Base 10 (10, 20, 30,...,10n) that almost everyone uses to create order in a world that doesn't know numbers.
There is PHI* - 1.618 - the Divine Proportion, derived from a Fibonacci sequence, where the sum of adjacent terms equal the next term, and whose quotients equal PHI (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,....).
PHI is considered a beautiful number. An amazing aspect of PHI is its role as a basic building block in nature. Plants, animals and humans have dimensions that have the ratio of PHI to 1. The ratio of female bees to male bees in a honeybee community, for example, is equal to PHI. The spiral shell of a cephalopod mollusc for example has the ratio of PHI in diameter from one spiral to another. Sunflower seeds grow in opposing spirals that have the ratio of PHI from one rotation's diameter to another. PHI is also a ratio for spiralled pinecone petals, leaf arrangement on plant stalks, insect segmentation and so much more. The term Divine Proportion does not have to be taken literally. Nature is more fantastic than the imagination can comprehend. Since it's derived from Fibonacci numbers, maybe it would seem natural that the addition of previous proportions to the next one has survival or natural utility.
Body proportions equal PHI. Measure, for example, the distance from the head's tip to the floor. Then divide that by the distance from the belly button to the floor. Other PHI proportions include the ratio from shoulder to fingertips and from elbow to fingertips. Another one: Divide distance from hip to floor to distance between knee and the floor. Other ones: spinal divisions, finger joints, toes. PHI is a beautiful proportion.
* From the Da Vinci Code
Posted at 02:12 pm by starsi
