Reality is chaos. From the astronomical seemingly random astrological explosions of stars to the blurringly fast whizzing of subatomic particles that make up everything we touch, see and are. Not even these northern European policies can fool the universe into thinking that that there is an order in all of this mess. Right?
From the evidence in our day to day lives, this would appear to be true. Fifteen car pileups, the death of innocent children, human behavior, tv weather broadcasts. Nothing is reliable and it certainly isn't logical.
But look deeper. The pattern of a fern leaf, the patterns of geology, the patterns of vascular and neurological systems within our own bodies. None of this is accidental. In fact, philosophers, mathematicians, biologists, geologists, astronomers, tailors, bricklayers and architects have laid claims to theories stating otherwise for hundreds, dare I say thousands, of years. Even the chaos theory is based on an understanding of a natural desire for order. As Anne Tyng put it, “The elegance of probability is that it can be a safety net to catch chaos.” In fact, beneath all of the chaos we seem to exist within, lays a consistent web, from the macro to the micro, of seemingly complete and spontaneous order.
Tyng believed that if architects chose to and were successful in mimicking this order, perhaps our own desperation in a world of seemingly endless chaos would be offset. Geometry exists as an example of our ability to imagine a true Platonic form of an object; the object that exists as the conceptual basis for anything that mimics it. Theoretically each and every object has a perfect form. By drawing a triangle on a blackboard, I am representing this perfect form in the eternally imperfect humanistic way of doing so. These concepts which defy reality and yet are able to describe reality on a cosmic level by relating information to us on everything from triangles and squares to systems of particles to solar systems. Even stardust creates simple geometric forms in planes in outer space.
Phyllotaxy is the study of the arrangement of leaves on a stem. Complex series of Fibonacci progressions can be found swirling and intersecting like ribbons falling in slow motion. For example,two spirals might begin at an inner leaf of a branch. One spiral passes through three leaves while a spiral in the other direction passes through five leaves, allowing the two to intersect every 15 leaves up the branch. According to Tyng, this complete order of the Fibonacci triangle, with each triangle having the same reaction to the triangle preceding it, so defines the structure of our world that it must, due to being inhabitants and therefore spectators within it and being made of the same stuff ourselves, structure the very patterns in our thoughts. The golden mean is the very structure of human intuition.
Molly Rodgveller
From the evidence in our day to day lives, this would appear to be true. Fifteen car pileups, the death of innocent children, human behavior, tv weather broadcasts. Nothing is reliable and it certainly isn't logical.
But look deeper. The pattern of a fern leaf, the patterns of geology, the patterns of vascular and neurological systems within our own bodies. None of this is accidental. In fact, philosophers, mathematicians, biologists, geologists, astronomers, tailors, bricklayers and architects have laid claims to theories stating otherwise for hundreds, dare I say thousands, of years. Even the chaos theory is based on an understanding of a natural desire for order. As Anne Tyng put it, “The elegance of probability is that it can be a safety net to catch chaos.” In fact, beneath all of the chaos we seem to exist within, lays a consistent web, from the macro to the micro, of seemingly complete and spontaneous order.
Tyng believed that if architects chose to and were successful in mimicking this order, perhaps our own desperation in a world of seemingly endless chaos would be offset. Geometry exists as an example of our ability to imagine a true Platonic form of an object; the object that exists as the conceptual basis for anything that mimics it. Theoretically each and every object has a perfect form. By drawing a triangle on a blackboard, I am representing this perfect form in the eternally imperfect humanistic way of doing so. These concepts which defy reality and yet are able to describe reality on a cosmic level by relating information to us on everything from triangles and squares to systems of particles to solar systems. Even stardust creates simple geometric forms in planes in outer space.
Phyllotaxy is the study of the arrangement of leaves on a stem. Complex series of Fibonacci progressions can be found swirling and intersecting like ribbons falling in slow motion. For example,two spirals might begin at an inner leaf of a branch. One spiral passes through three leaves while a spiral in the other direction passes through five leaves, allowing the two to intersect every 15 leaves up the branch. According to Tyng, this complete order of the Fibonacci triangle, with each triangle having the same reaction to the triangle preceding it, so defines the structure of our world that it must, due to being inhabitants and therefore spectators within it and being made of the same stuff ourselves, structure the very patterns in our thoughts. The golden mean is the very structure of human intuition.
Molly Rodgveller
