The Golden Ratio

My husband is a mathematician. We actually met when I needed help passing Calculus II.  I can distinctly remember talking to him about the Fibonacci series. He saw it so simply and I just thought it was ridiculous (mostly because it wasn't making sense at all).

My husband can see math all around him. He sees how it is involved in nature, manufacturing, economics and much of politics, other sciences, and even in the gospel. Understanding math strengthens his testimony of the creation and of the gospel. He sees beauty and order in it.

I recently found this post on a favorite homeschooling blog of mine. I watched it with my husband and son. As a matter of fact, D asked to watch it over and over again. It is beautiful. After the video was over, my husband said, "And some people would try and make you believe that is was all by some chance," and shook his head. He was referring to order and logic that is involved in such beauty. It isn't all by chance, but rather there is a Divine Creator. I hope to be able to teach my son to not only see the beauty in mathematics, but also see how it can lead us to look towards our Savior and Father on Heaven.

As a little background, the golden ratio is a number, approximately 1.61803398874989, that shows up as you study math, biology, architecture, music, etc.  Understanding of the golden ratio seems to have started around 440 BC with the building of the Parthenon, and continued to grow as other scientists, such as Plato and Fibonacci, discovered other occurrences in math and geometry. The mathematician and philosopher Zeising wrote in 1854 of a universal law "in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form." You can read more about the Golden Ratio here.



Enjoy!

(While writing this post, D heard the music from the video and came running in saying, "Mom, I love that video!" I guess we will be watching it again and again.)