Why is the Parthenon so beautiful, or the greek vase? The ancient greeks were great observers of nature. They founded the notion that numerical ratios underlie the structure of living things, and attempted to employ these "living" or "golden" proportions to their art and architecture. The most prominent of these ratios is commonly known as the golden section. It is a proportion that describes 1.618 units for every one unit of length. This number is found to be omnipresent throughout nature in forms such as the chambered nautilus, the head of a sunflower, the shapes of leaves and insects, perhaps even in the shape of a spiral nebula or our DNA helix! To the Greeks this constancy of appearance in nature pointed to the existence of a divinity.
Artists of the past centuries have been aware of the golden number and other ratios such as the "root rectangles" (rectangles built on the square root ratios of 2, 3, 4 etc.) Many employed these numbers to build compositions that continue to appeal to the eye and spirit of the contemporary observer. The numerically influenced designs are probably part of the reason that a great work of art endures.
