Life, Art, and the "Golden Ratio" or "Divine Proportion" (Phi)

An earlier post dealt with life imitating art and art imitating life.  The "Golden Ratio" or "Divine Proportion" (Phi, 1.6180339877. . .) was introduced in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.  Amazingly, this ratio or proportion applies to nature, music, art, and is a sort of "universal principle."

Another group of numbers introduced in The Da Vinci Code is called the Fibonacci numbers.  Leonardo de Piza (son of Bonaccio--and therefore "Fibonacci") shared these numbers with the western world in his book, Liber Abaci, in 1202.  These numbers are reflected in nature and, once introduced to the world, in many works of art.

In the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, mankind attempts to communicate with other species by mathematically sequenced musical notes.  In this regard, mathematics is seen as a sort of "universal language." 

These concepts certainly demonstrate that certain mathematical formulae reflect critical processes in nature and art and provide a supporting structure for a link between the two.