It only leads to the 'Golden Section' because you want it to Herb. Nature does not obey numbers! There is nothing special about those numbers at all. But there may well be something very special about a thing they may have been used to describe.
There are many ways in which a picture may be presented in a pleasing way. The 'golden' way is only one example. We all know that numbers are among the symbols of a special universal language called Mathematics. The numbers themselves have no special quality. Games have been played with these symbols for a long time. Thousands of books have been written, and read too, on how numbers affect our lives. I saw, recently, a book about the secret code of the bible - number nonsense taken to an extreme. The only valid statements that can be made about it is that it is a book, printed on paper and seems to have made money for the author and publisher. But it is only one of a long string of them going back for decades. When you say that these special numbers occur in nature what you're actually saying is that they have some kind of magical or special aesthetic quality. Yes? Its the other way around. The numbers derive from the way nature is arranged. Looking at an X-ray diffraction pattern, or the arrangement of atoms in an electron micrograph, or the number of electrons in the shells about an atom, virus particles, or the incredible DNA molecule. Or even counting the number of coils in a sea-snail shell, or measuring snow crystals, and finally dividing, multiplying, solving quadratics, differentiating, integrating, and ending with some numbers that you conclude represent some kind of a 'golden rule of nature' is comparable to the secret worship of numbers by the Pythagoreans. There is no example of a golden section in nature. For every one you can make fit the rule by manipulating it into the shape of a rectangle, millions can be found that simply don't match. And I add, although this might be a little out of place here, during the last 45 years or so pictorial 'fractals' have been appended to the 'number magic' quiver. The 'Golden Section' has no more aesthetic validity than the universal magic word abracadabra. I remember vividly one particular middle-school art class. We had a teacher with long hair and dirty fingernails. He could draw. But seemed unable to shave or visit a barber. My goodness but he could draw! He used pastels on huge sheets of paper. That day he put a house, and a tree, and a picket fence; a road some figures, a few cows and a horse on his drawing. All were rough outlines to start with and they were nicely arranged. He told us that day ~not~ to put things in the middle of the paper unless it was a portrait because our picture might be boring. He did not divide the sheet with compass and ruler and talk about golden sections - ever. His name was William Bruce Frank. I asked for, and was given that finished pastel, and had it until about 20 years ago when it was lost in our move to these cold climes. >From ancient times people have been chasing magical numbers. The Pythagoreans formed, in fact they ~were~ a secret religious society, and they had strange ideas about numbers. Some numbers were 'Good' others were 'Evil' - Good and Evil were entirely separate sets of numbers. But one day the poor buggers found, to their dismay, while messing about with their magic, that Good was also Evil. I could post an excerpt from one of my books (on my website) in which I touch briefly upon the matter - if anyone is the ~slightest~ bit interested. Many authors have written about this 'Good and Evil' number thing and references can be found by the hundred if anyone is interested. But as I said, this is really quite a load and will lead nowhere. Some members will go so far as to post with ~other member's names~ in the subject line. Don Dr E D F Williams http://personal.inet.fi/cool/don.williams Author's Web Site and Photo Gallery Updated: March 30, 2002 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Herb Chong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 12:26 AM Subject: Dr E D F Williams > Message text written by INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Sorry to have offended you. Any subject bearing on composition in > photography is on topic here. If this becomes too upsetting for you, I'm > sure there are other lists where your judgments of others posts will > appreciated. > > Regards, > Bob....< > > Don is also ignoring some basic molecular biology and crystallography. face > centered cubic structures pack naturally in a way that leads to the golden > section and that is why the form appears in nature. > > Herb.... > >
