Medieval History
The story is extraordinary. Even as the world was mired in medieval darkness, with the crushing hand of religion blocking all scientific inquiry, a lone genius named Fibonacci appeared on the shores of the Mediterranean. Through magnificent creative struggles, he discovered a number with near magical properties.
It is an infinite sequence that begins 1.61803? and is sometimes known as the Golden Ratio; sometimes as the Divine Proportion. Mathematicians symbolise it by the Greek letter phi, and it can be used to produce the most beautiful rectangle humans can recognise: one that already was understood when the Parthenon was designed and, in times to come, would be incorporated by Leonardo da Vinci in his greatest works of art. It appears today in the proportions even of the humble credit card.
Or so the internet, and many popular books, would have us believe. In fact, the man referred to in so many accounts, originally Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci came long after his death, from his family's name), was not much of a genius. Nor was he living in an age of ignorance. Nor does the shape that came to be associated with his name actually appear in Greek sculpture, or Renaissance art, or our Mastercards today.
Click here to read this article from The Guardian
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Medieval History
The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution by Keith Devlin ? review
It is an infinite sequence that begins 1.61803? and is sometimes known as the Golden Ratio; sometimes as the Divine Proportion. Mathematicians symbolise it by the Greek letter phi, and it can be used to produce the most beautiful rectangle humans can recognise: one that already was understood when the Parthenon was designed and, in times to come, would be incorporated by Leonardo da Vinci in his greatest works of art. It appears today in the proportions even of the humble credit card.
Or so the internet, and many popular books, would have us believe. In fact, the man referred to in so many accounts, originally Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci came long after his death, from his family's name), was not much of a genius. Nor was he living in an age of ignorance. Nor does the shape that came to be associated with his name actually appear in Greek sculpture, or Renaissance art, or our Mastercards today.
Click here to read this article from The Guardian
- How A Medieval Friar Forever Changed Finance
Consider some headlines from the past week. China announced its gross domestic product had slowed to a three-year low of 7.6 percent in the latest quarter. The International Monetary Fund cut its global growth forecasts to 3.9 percent for 2013. And Citigroup...
- Leonardo Da Vinci: Bag Designer
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was an artist, inventor, scientist, architect, engineer, writer and even a musician. Now we know that he was also a fashion designer. After several months of meticulous research, scholars have reconstructed some fragmented...
- Lost And Found: The Secrets Of Archimedes Opens At The Walters
In 1999, the Walters Art Museum and a team of researchers began a project to read the erased texts of The Archimedes Palimpsest?the oldest surviving copy of works by the greatest mathematical genius of antiquity. Over 12 years, many techniques were employed...
- Wonders Of The Medieval World
Medieval Europe is often portrayed as a dark time of pestilence, filth, violence, intolerance and ignorance -- a disconnect between the splendor of the Roman empire and the cultural explosion of humanism during the Renaissance. The truth is far more complicated....
- Newly Rediscovered Da Vinci Painting To Go On Display At The National Gallery
he National Gallery in England will be having the first public showing of a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci work, Salvator Mundi, which was created in the late 15th or early 16th century. It will be featured during the Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court...