Hi,
I'm Trevor Lewis and I'm here with Chris Largent,
The founder of the Seventh Academy.
Today we're talking about the golden proportion and we're looking at the picture of Vitruvian Man,
Which is a drawing created by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci around 1490.
Chris,
Talk to us about the golden proportion,
Which I believe is also known as the golden ratio.
Thanks very much,
Trevor.
Essentially,
This ratio was over time starting,
And we know for sure in the classical world,
It's probably much older than that,
But by the Renaissance,
People started realizing,
Look,
There's a ratio that we can find practically everywhere.
Fibonacci series would be added to that later.
What happens is that this ratio,
We find it in nature,
In the structure of galaxies,
The structure of humans,
The way we create,
And so on.
By the Renaissance,
Someone named Luca Pacioli was writing a book on it and he got a friend of his who was a decent artist named Leonardo da Vinci to illustrate it.
You have the famous illustration here,
Which is Leonardo showing the human form relative to golden proportions and squaring the circle.
You'll also notice down at the bottom,
The foot is artificially turned sideways in a way that would practically break your foot,
But that's to point out that the foot is a basic measurement in the golden proportion.
That's how you have one foot as a measurement.
It says that fundamental is everywhere.
The universe,
Why that's a big deal,
It's golden proportion is something that a higher principle level is a guarantee of harmony and beauty.
Then a pattern level,
It's constantly creating that.
In an everyday level,
Here we just walk down the levels,
In an everyday level,
It's a guarantee that problems will get solved,
Challenges get worked out,
My individual creativity will be expressed,
There'll be harmony and balance restored,
And so on.
This is something that underlies this.
We saw this once chaos theory kicked in and with the self-reproduction of fractals.
These are examples of the golden proportion here,
But it's practically everywhere.
There are studies of shapes because you live in a classical world.
This is called Vitruvian Man by scholars because Vitruvius was this classical architect who had buildings that obeyed the golden proportion so people felt better and healthier in them.
This study of shapes,
What do people feel happy about?
For instance,
Why is a credit card that shape?
Because it approximates the golden proportion.
We need to get this back.
The golden proportion has pretty much disappeared from math.
We still use pi,
Which is roughly the golden proportion,
And just jumped up a level.
If we get the golden proportion back in math,
It'll change the consciousness of individuals.
It'll be interesting to see how that happens in the history of mathematics.
This is this underlying guarantee of beauty and harmony that from the classical world to the Renaissance,
We were very aware of.
It made people feel,
If I want to solve a problem,
I've got wisdom,
I've got creativity,
I engage.
What happened after the Renaissance was,
In fact,
A whole lot of big empires trying to make this go away,
To make the world look terrible and fearful.
You say,
Well,
You need us to take over and run the show,
Especially it started in the 15th and 1600s,
When dictators would say,
The world is a terrible,
Horrible place,
You need to let us take over and run it for you.
The golden proportion says,
Nope,
That's not really true.
Somebody's having you on,
As my British friends would say.
Thank you,
Chris.
Thank you,
Everyone,
For joining us today.
If you'd like to hear more talks,
Please join us in the group Ancient World Wisdom.
And if you have any questions,
Comments,
Please feel free to post them in that group.
Again,
Ancient World Wisdom.
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