Introduction

The golden ratio, or golden mean, is of profound importance not just in all living and biological systems, planets, atoms, etc. but also in life experiences. It's all about relationships. From relating one distance to another, one planet to another or indeed the relationships between people. The implications of it are staggering and thusly an understanding of it makes life so much more fascinating and exciting. To see the very connectedness of all life infinitely expressed using this number, in a very real way, allows for a greater understanding of life.

So what is the golden ratio?

Firstly it is known by many names as it is such an important ratio: Phi or the symbol φ, the golden mean, the golden section, the golden cut, the divine proportion and the divine section.

Remember back in school the number pi: 3.14....... You used it for doing stuff with circles. It is a ratio. A ratio is the result of comparing two things, namely numbers. Pi is generally known as an irrational number (apparently because there's no reasoning with it, a little like a tax inspector), which means it appears to go on forever without resolution. Phi is the golden child from the same family of number, but we don't hear to much about it in school (because it's revolutionary, doesn't play ball and it can set you free!). Phi is abbreviated to 1.618 but it goes on forever, here is a bit more of it: 1.6180339887498948482... Have a look at what Jain has to say about it.

So what, what's the big deal? It's just a number, dude!

"Number is the within of all things" - Pythagoras

Ok, let's look at the real world and see how life expresses itself through phi. In the physical enviroment phi is never perfectly expressed, but nature gets close to it, it aims for perfection. So here's a picture of my arm with the hand and forearm measured out in inches and centimetres. Since we are all humans here (except Mike) it's most relevent to look at phi in the human body.

The Golden Ratio in the Arm

So let's see what the relationship is between the hand and the forearm. To do this we need to use the measurements. Take the length of the forearm (31.2 cm or 12 inches) and divide it by the length of the hand (19.5cm or 7.5 inches). So, some basic maths here:

12 inches / 7.5 inches = 1.6

31.2 cm / 19.5 cm = 1.6

Look at that! The ratio of my hand to my forearm is 1.6, that's pretty close to 1.618. Not bad for an Irish man ;)

We can do the same if we zoom into the hand. The magic does not just happen at one level. To get better accuracy I am using an x-ray of a hand so we can see the actual bones. Also, since we are just talking about relationships here we have no need for feet and inches! Great stuff, let's get on with it!

The Golden Ratio in the Hand

As you can see I have coloured the different segments of the hand and labelled them a, b and c. You may also notice that this person has a tattoo of Holistic House Plans on their bone. So I've taken measurements of each segment and made them into nice big numbers:

a = 107

b = 172

c = 272

So, look at a and b: b / a = 172 / 107 = 1.607! Holy smokes!

Next we look at the b and c relationship:

c / b = 272 / 172 = 1.599

Again we see that we have some numbers that are getting close to phi! So it's not just happening in the arm but the hand also. Have a look at our Human Body page to see where else it is expressed in the body. However, its not just limited to the human body. Have a look at other parts of this site to see the wonderful array of expressions life has through phi. You'll see phi in plants and trees, insects, animals, fish, atoms, planets, solar systems and piles more. Life is great isn't it!

What Does it All Mean?

What we are seeing here is truely remarkable. The relationships between parts of the human body share one similarity, a desire to reach phi, the golden section. However, I'm sure you have observed that we have never hit the perfect golden section in the above examples. That is because in the physical realm this is not a possibility, nothing is infinite in this life, nothing goes on forever. Perfect can be strived for here but never reached, but we can get really, really close! To see how close nature gets go to the next page on the Fibonacci Sequence.

This has opened to door to a whole different way of viewing our world, so check out the sections below for more: