The golden ratio isn't hiding in the Parthenon.
You've probably heard that the Parthenon, the Mona Lisa and your perfect face all follow the 'divine' proportion of about 1.618. Mathematicians who have checked say most of these claims don't hold up. The ratio is genuinely beautiful in maths. Its role in art is mostly a modern myth.
The golden ratio, usually written φ (phi), is about 1.618. Two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the larger to the smaller equals the ratio of their sum to the larger. It has remarkable mathematical properties: it is closely tied to the Fibonacci sequence, since the ratio of successive Fibonacci numbers approaches φ, and it appears in the geometry of the regular pentagon.
Around these genuine properties, a mythology has grown. The ratio is said to be hidden in the Parthenon's facade, the Great Pyramid, Leonardo's paintings and the ideal human face, and to explain why we find things beautiful. Much of this goes back to the 19th century, particularly the German writer Adolf Zeising, who argued the ratio was a universal law of beauty.
When mathematicians have checked, many claims fall apart. The mathematician George Markowsky, in a 1992 paper, 'Misconceptions about the Golden Ratio', showed that measurements of buildings like the Parthenon can be chosen to produce almost any ratio you like, and there is no evidence the ancient Greeks designed it that way. Psychological experiments have also failed to find a strong, consistent preference for golden rectangles over similar proportions.
Some modern designers did use the ratio deliberately. Le Corbusier built his Modulor proportion system around it, and some painters in the 20th century experimented with it. In nature, the angles between successive leaves or seeds in some plants relate to it. But the idea of a universal secret code of beauty is a story we tell, not a discovery we have made.
Source: Wikipedia — Golden ratio · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
