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In The Laws and The Republic, Plato expanded on this idea to include ethics and social responsibility, in the sense that each of us ought to serve something greater than our individual self. Plato's view of creation, and in fact his entire social philosophy, was really a philosophy about balance, moderation, and appropriateness of scould unite and harmonize with the whole. This was accomplished spatially, at least in part, through a system of harmonic ratios and the proportions of some basic geometric shapes, such as triangles, squares, and pentagons. These are the very same proportions that underlie the structure of our own human bodies.

This notion of proportion and its ability to create unity out of a diversity of elements includes the proportions of the human body and the ways in which human measure can also measure the universe as a whole. The Sophist Protagoras said in the fifth century B.C., "Man is the measure of all things," but to say that human begins are the measure is not to say that we are all-powerful or all essential elements of the universe.

It is more useful to see the universe rather as a hologram in which each individual part contains the information of the whole. As Blake said, "The entire universe resides in every grain of sand." If this is true, then the tapestry of relationships that we call the human organism and the tapestry that is the universe are really as one. In this spirit, the universal macrocosm has been patterned after the human microcosm throughout history.

In a rendition by Robert Fludd, a seventeenth century mystic and philosopher, the physical human body is equated with the elemental and planetary spheres in a Polemic, or earth centered universe, with the four elements in the center surrounded by the spheres of the planets and then the wider circle of the fixed stars and the zodiac. Beyond the physical body are the higher faculties of human thought -- reason, intellect, and mind -- which correspond to the outer etheric realms of angels and archangels. And beyond that is the spiritual dimension of the human being, which corresponds to the very spark of divine creation.

In another rendition, which comes from an early- fifteenth century Book of Hours, the various parts of the human anatomy relate to the 12 signs of the zodiac, which has often been used to symbolize the world. Aries, the ram, is at the head and Pisces, the fish, is at the feet; all the other signs of the zodiac occupy some part of the human body in a system that forms the basis of astrology.

So the human being can be the measure of the world itself, and this is why the human anatomy has served as a measuring rod since the beginning of time. For example, if I want to know how long something is and I don't have a ruler, I can simply pace the distance heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe, one foot-length at a time. So when I say that something is five feet long or so, I am really saying that my own foot is the standard of measure.

The fathom is another unit of measure that derives from the human body, in this case the length of an average arm span. The ancient Egyptian cubit was derived from the measure of the forearm, while the remen was derived from the upper arm. The two together expressed the geometry of a square, the remen being the side of the square and the cubit the diagonal.

In many cases, a unit of measure can relate both to the human body and to the physical body of the earth itself. For example, the ancient Egyptian cubit, the length of the forearm, is also equal to l/l,000 of the distance that the earth rotates at the equator in one second of time (Lawlor, 1982).

With this in mind, it makes sense to design our spaces, especially those having to do with healing, with a sense of human proportion and human scale. When we design for a healthy environment, one that can effect healthy, human encounters, we ought to be asking questions like, "What is the appropriate size for a room or a building? What are the limits of growth? How large or how small? How many? How few?" All of these questions have to do with appropriateness of size and scale, and perhaps can best be answered by taking a sense of human scale into account.

Golden Mean Proportions

The Golden Mean proportion appears in the pentagon in the relationship between the length of a side and the length of a diagonal (if the side of a pentagon is 1, the diagonal will be 1.618...or phi). The golden ratio also appears in the structure of the human body. Many of us know that Leonardo's Vitruvian Man shows how the human proportions of man can relate to the circle and square, but it also renders the adult male figure divided at the navel according to the golden section. At birth, the navel divides the infant's total height exactly in half. But then, as he grows up, the navel appears to rise in its relation to the rest of the body, until it finally makes a near perfect Golden Section. At the same time, the half division lowers to mark the sexual organs.

But the sexual organs may also divide the human body at the Golden Section if we stretch our arms above our heads. If the length from the organs to the floor is equal to one, then the length from the organs to the fingertips will be equal to phi. If you sit on the floor with your legs extended and then extend your arms above your heard and bend forward at the hips so that your fingertips touch the vertical plane of your toes, then you would form the same angle as the face angles of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. And that is just one of the many examples of Golden Mean symmetry in the pyramids of ancient Egypt.

The same Golden Mean proportion approximates the spatial composition of the nautilus shell. The true growth curve ratio of a nautilus is slightly higher than the golden ratio by about three percent, so minor deviations may be seen. Still, we tend to see the shell spatially according to the Golden Mean.
Divine Proportion

One of the things we can derive from this is the notion that architecture can be experienced as an extension of our own bodies and our own human proportions. Allowing for each of our unique and individual differences, the proportions of the human face generally conform to a Golden Mean rectangle. The joints of the fingers divide the fingers in a Golden Mean progression, just as the cross- section of a triton shell displays a central stem that divides in a Golden Mean progression.

I can drawn a pentagon with a golden triangle made from the side of the pentagon and its two diagonals. Then, I have used the golden triangle to make a Golden Mean logarithmic spiral and overlaid that on a picture of a triton shell. Each chamber of the triton shell lies along a portion of the same Golden Mean spiral.

Golden Mean symmetries are also found in apple blossoms, although, of course, no two apple blossoms are exactly alike. Each blossom is unique and none ever conforms precisely to any idealized geometry. The apple blossom from the Cotswolds is vastly different from the blossom from Delphi in Greece. Yet, for all of those differences, the same pattern of Golden Mean geometry fits both varieties and if an apple is cut in two, you will see by the star pentagon of seeds inside that the Golden Mean proportion appears throughout the life of the apple, from seed through blossom to fruit.

If you are still having trouble grasping the Golden Mean because of those funny little Greek letters and symbols, nature has another way of expressing Golden Mean relationships in a series of simple whole numbers. This series is called the Fibonacci series.

The full series of numbers actually reads like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144.... The key to the series is that each successive ratio of neighboring numbers oscillates above and then below the true value of phi, or 1.618034. So, 13/8 (1.625) is above 1.618 or phi; 21/13 (1.615) is below phi, but a little closer in value; 34/21 (12.619) is again above and closer still, etc.
What is phi?

The Fibonacci series also shows how a geometric progression can work with addition to produce the same series. While the numbers are growing in a geometric way, at the same time, they are also increasing by simple addition. The point is that the Fibonacci series works exactly like a true Golden Mean progression, except that it uses whole number approximations.

In the natural world, Fibonacci numbers can be found in a number of organic and, especially, botanical forms. For example, the number of petals of a variety of flowers is often a Fibonacci number. The primrose has five petals, the ragwort has 13, the daisy has 21 or 34 petals, the Michaelmas daisy has 55 and sometimes even 89 petals.

It would seem that phi also has the power to help living things grow toward the light, for example, in the way that leaves distribute themselves around a stem to get maximum sunlight exposure. A diagram from H.E. Huntley's The Divine Proportion shows that the number of turns the leaf series makes around the stem before a leaf appears directly above another leaf (in this case, two) and the number of leaves between these two leaves (in this case, five) will often be Fibonacci numbers. Perhaps this has something to do with why the Pythagorean associated fivefoldedness with Apollo, the god or principle of light.

So, the Golden Mean proportions that derive from the human body and appear in nature can also be present in architecture, particularly in those cultures which place a value on health and harmony and a sense of well-being. The beauty of proportion is that it unites diverse elements without compromising the integrity of any individual part.

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