Re: Re: Golden Section and


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Posted by AW on February 29, 2004 at 17:34:10:

In Reply to: Re: Golden Section and posted by Rick Denney on February 29, 2004 at 14:38:00:

Rick, I'd like to add one of my pet peeves to your sensible post: In science and engineering, sometimes a person will say that something happens because of a certain equation. This is, of course, not true. Something in the physical world happens due to physical causes, not because of this created human thought abstraction called mathematics. What can be true is that a mathematical equation is an adequate descriptive and predictive model of a physical process. But, that's all it can be, a model.

I would expect a mathematical description of a tuba to be extremely large and complex. Who knows, buried somewhere inside the many pages of equations there might be hints of the Golden Mean, or the Fibonacci Series. However, one would likely find pi and e more often. What is the signicance of this? None that I can see.

My taste for real beauty in nature is an exponential series, such as found in sea shells and rows of organ pipes.

Cheers,
Allen Walker



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