Re: sacred geometry

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
19 Sep 1997 10:36:08 +0200


CALYK@aol.com writes:

> i think yall would be interested in this site: www.zometool.com
>
> They sell a structural system based on the Golden Mean. Its amazing how they
> all fit together. Its a great way to explore math and geometry. I have a
> set. Its awesome.

I agree. I really want one set! (I always found the square symmetry
of lego limiting)

Although I think calling it sacred geometry evokes associations with
crop circles and pyramidology it is not far from the point. The
golden mean (phi, ~1.61) (which appears naturally in the 2.3.5 symmetry
group) is a very fundamental constant of nature, in some sense it is
the "most important simple irrational number" (yes, it beats
sqrt(2)) and crops up everywhere. My favorite is the fact that
the winding number of the last KAM-torus to dissolve as a
hamiltonian system grows more chaotic has a winding number of
phi (this is beacuse it is "the most irrational of the irrational
numbers"; rational approximations to phi converge the slowest of
all approximations).

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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