Laputan Logic
Blog find of the week is Laputan Logic via Social Fiction (see sidebar).
It manages to combine good scientific rigour with a wry sense of humour, and some nice sideswipes at irrationalist new-agery (and more traditional irrationalism…)
See for example: Anti-Christ 616 on the alternate number of the beast; and
The Cult of the Golden Ratio on hermetic geometry and all that:
Honestly, people spout a lot of crap about the Golden Ratio .
I mean that, to paraphrase the Willard character out of Apocalypse Now, there’s just so much bullshit piling up on this subject that you practically need wings to stay above it.
The Golden Ratio, once a pristine jewel of geometrical truth and simplicity, has become a deity for a cult of hyperlinking headnodders whose chief devotional practice seems to be to handwave their way from one disconnected and unexamined falsehood to another.
lush, nicely found
If he’s throwing out the “esoteric” meanings of the golden mean, he’s throwing out half the meaning. Lots of pythagorean science / mysticism in there.
Have you read it?
there is an amazing book about esoteric maths, mandalas, the golden ratio and the sigma code if u don’t already know it by the architect cecil balmond, the book has lots of slightly cloying ‘storytelling but the maths is amazing http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3791319337/qid=1116874160/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_10_2/202-4404460-4071014
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As an example:
“While the ancients certainly knew and understood about the Golden Ratio, they didn’t invest it with any special significance apart from its obvious geometrical utility.”
I think that’s a questionable statement. The last 20 years has seen a vast amount of mainstream archaeological research into ancient sacred geometry and alignments, and there’s almost always a spiritual or numinous aspect to them. (See the references in Francis Pryor’s excellent BC for examples.) I think he’s arguing a little bit beyond his premises.
Good shit though [exhales].
I think he is right to try and reign in the absolute codswallop which goes with the territory, which actually ends up tarnishing the actual weirdness of it all. I’ll take rationalists with a sense of humour over po-faced mystics any day of the week