The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number-Quality Guarantee

Description

Throughout history, thinkers from mathematicians to theologians have pondered themysterious relationship between numbers and the nature of reality. In this fascinatingbook, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: phi, curious mathematical relationship, widely known as “The GoldenRatio,” was discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago because of itscrucial role in the construction of the pentagram, to which magical properties hadbeen attributed. Since then it has shown a propensity to appear in the most astonishingvariety of places, from mollusk shells, sunflower florets, and rose petals to theshape of the galaxy. Psychological studies have investigated whether the Golden Ratiois the most aesthetically pleasing proportion extant, and it has been asserted thatthe creators of the Pyramids and the Parthenon employed it. It is believed to featurein works of art from Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to Salvador Dali’s The Sacramentof the Last Supper, and poets and composers have used it in their works. It has evenbeen found to be connected to the behavior of the stock market!

The Golden Ratio is a captivating journey through art and architecture, botany and biology, physicsand mathematics. It tells the human story of numerous phi-fixated individuals, includingthe followers of Pythagoras who believed that this proportion revealed the hand ofGod; astronomer Johannes Kepler, who saw phi as the greatest treasure of geometry;such Renaissance thinkers as mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa; and such mastersof the modern world as Goethe, Cezanne, Bartok, and physicist Roger quest for the meaning of phi takes him, Mario Livio reveals the world as a placewhere order, beauty, and eternal mystery will always coexist.