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

Summary

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:

&#9679 Why cans, pizza, and manhole covers are round.

&#9679 Why one and two weren't considered numbers by the ancient Greeks.

&#9679 Why squares show up so often in goddess art and board games.

&#9679 What property makes the spiral the most widespread shape in nature, from embryos and hair curls to hurricanes and galaxies.

&#9679 How the human body shares the design of a bean plant and the solar system.

&#9679 And much more.