The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture

Doczi, Gyorgy

ISBN 10: 0877731934 / ISBN 13: 9780877731931

Published by Shambhala Publications, 1981

About this Item

Stiff color illus. wraps, oblong format. Minor handling wear. [x],150 pp., illus. 4th ptg.: 1994. Size: 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.

Seller Inventory # 069517

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture
• Publisher: Shambhala Publications
• Publication Date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0877731934
• ISBN 13: 9780877731931
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Book Type: Book
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art: Painting, Drawing, Sculpture
  • Philosophy
  • Science, Math, Technology, Astronomy

About this title

Synopsis

One of the delights of life is the discovery and rediscovery of patterns of order and beauty in nature—the designs revealed by slicing through a head of cabbage or an orange, the forms of shells and butterfly wings. These images are awesome not just for their beauty alone, but because they suggest an order underlying their growth, a harmony existing in nature. What does it mean that such an order exists; how far does it extend?

The Power of Limits was inspired by those simple discoveries of harmony. The author then went on to investigate and measure hundreds of patterns—ancient and modern, minute and vast. His discovery, vividly illustrated here, is that certain proportions occur over and over again in all these forms. Patterns are also repeated in how things grow and are made—by the dynamic union of opposites—as demonstrated by the spirals which move in opposite directions in the growth of a plant.

The joining of unity and diversity in the discipline of proportional limitations creates forms that are beautiful to us because they embody the principles of the cosmic order of which we are a part; conversely, the limitlessness of that order is revealed by the strictness of its forms. The author shows how we, as humans, are included in the universal harmony of form, and suggests that the union of complementary opposites may be a way to extend that harmony to the psychological and social realms as well.

About the Author

György Doczi practiced architecture in Hungary, Sweden, Iran, and the United States. He initiated a permanent exhibit on form in nature and art at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, and was a founder of the Friends of Jungian Psychology Northwest. He died in 1995.