The Beauty of Measure
and the Measure of Beauty

Elizabeth A. Fisher

Randolph-Macon College

“The Golden Ratio.  PHI: The world’s most astonishing number” proclaims one book.  “Sacred Geometry,” claims another, and another:  “The Secret Language of Symbols.”  And who can miss the current enthusiasm for The DaVinci Code?  These and numerous other recent books range from scholarly-but-accessible to popular fiction, but all feature numbers and art as gateways to interpretation of spiritual, religious, psychological, and practical aspects of culture.

The languages of math and art both rely heavily upon symbols which convey meaning only to those who can “speak” the language.  The commonality of symbolic language which reveals meanings both “universal” and culturally specific was the basis of a year-long freshman course intertwining mathematics and art history, taught at Randolph-Macon College in 2004-05.  In The Beauty of Measure, students were introduced to the history of mathematics and the ways in which numbers were imagined in various cultures.  We looked at the Rhind Papyrus, truncated pyramids, and the fractional arithmetic of the Egyptians; we looked at Plimpton 322 and “Pythagorean triplets” in Babylonian math;  we studied the Platonic solids, Archimedes, Euclid, and ratio in Greek mathematics.  We looked at the mathematics of perspective, and the numerical analysis used to decipher codes and languages.  The emphasis was on the nature of proof as a basis for our own cultural understanding of mathematics.  

In The Measure of Beauty we followed the standard “Grotto to Giotto” art history survey, but again looked at how mathematics and numbers were present (or not) in Paleolithic notched bones, Egyptian pyramids, Babylonian and Assyrian sculpture, Greek architectural programs, Classical to Neoclassical sculpture, Roman frescoes, Islamic calligraphy, and Renaissance paintings, just to mention a few.  The emphasis was on the use of “canons” for proportions, perspective, and formal composition in art. 

In this paper, I will discuss some of the content of this course and my paedagogical approaches as an archaeologist/ancient art historian, and those of my colleague, a computer-scientist with training in mathematics, particularly number theory.  I will also talk about the (mostly happy) reactions of students, and the invigorating and collegial lessons of collaboration between the disciplines of math and art.