A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science

Schneider, Michael S.

ISBN 10: 0060926716 / ISBN 13: 9780060926717

Published by HarperPerennial, 1995

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

Title: A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the ...

Publisher: HarperPerennial

Publication Date: 1995

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis:

The Universe May Be a Mystery,
But It's No Secret

Michael Schneider leads us on a spectacular, lavishly illustrated journey along the numbers one through ten to explore the mathematical principles made visible in flowers, shells, crystals, plants, and the human body, expressed in the symbolic language of folk sayings and fairy tales, myth and religion, art and architecture. This is a new view of mathematics, not the one we learned at school but a comprehensive guide to the patterns that recur through the universe and underlie human affairs. A Beginner's Guide to Constructing, the Universe shows you:

Why cans, pizza, and manhole covers are round.

Why one and two weren't considered numbers by the ancient Greeks.

Why squares show up so often in goddess art and board games.

What property makes the spiral the most widespread shape in nature, from embryos and hair curls to hurricanes and galaxies.

How the human body shares the design of a bean plant and the solar system.

How a snowflake is like Stonehenge, and a beehive like a calendar.

How our ten fingers hold the secrets of both a lobster and a cathedral.

And much more.

Review:

"Highly informative . . . [shows] Schneider's particular gift of transforming everyday experience into something magical . . . Highly recommended."-- "New Frontier"In this book you will find something that cannot be obtained elsewhere, a complete introduction to the geometric code of nature, written and illustrated by the most perceptive of its modern investigators."-- from the Preface by John Mitchell