Adolf Zeising

Adolf Zeising (1810-1876) was a German psychologist, whose main interests were mathematics and philosophy.

Among his discoveries, Zeising found the golden ratio expressed in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and of veins in leaves. He extended his research to the skeletons of animals and the branchings of their veins and nerves, to the proportions of chemical compounds and the geometry of crystals, even to the use of proportion in artistic endeavors. In these phenomena he saw the golden ratio operating as a universal law,[1]

the universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.[2]

Many of his studies were followed by Gustav Fechner[3] and Le Corbusier, who elaborated his studies of human proportion to develop the Modulor.[4]

Works

Notes

  1. ^ Padovan, Richard (1999). Proportion: Science, Philosophy, Architecture. London: Taylor & Francis. pp. 305–306. ISBN 0-419-22780-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=Vk_CQULdAssC&pg=PA306&dq=%22all+formative+striving+for+beauty%22&output=html&sig=ACfU3U0cVQuScCBAs4PejAlll2DtnHnPyQ. 
  2. ^ dass in ihm überhaupt das Grundprinzip aller nach Schönheit und Totalität drängenden Gestaltung im Reich der Natur, wie im Gebiet der Kunst enthalten ist und dass es von Uranfang an allen Formbildungen und formellen Verhältnissen, den kosmischen wie den individualisierenden, den organischen wie den anorganischen, den akustischen wie den optischen, als höchstes Ziel und Ideal vorschwebt, jedoch erst in der Menschengestalt seine vollkommene Realisation erfahren hat. Zeising, Adolf. Neue Lehre von den Proportionen des menschlischen Körpers, aus einem bisher unerkannt geblienenen, die ganze Natur durchdringenden morphologischen Grundgesetze entwickelt und mit einer vollständigen historischen Übersicht der bisherigen Systeme begleitet, Leipzig, 1854, preface p. V.; translated in Padovan, p.306
  3. ^ Brown, Clifford W. (1963). "Adolph Zeising and the Formalist Tradition in Aesthetics.". Archiv für Geschichte Der Philosophie 45: 23–32. http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/de-gruyter/adolph-zeising-and-the-formalist-tradition-in-aesthetics-5fIqaRfpI9. Retrieved 2011-02-28. 
  4. ^ Tavernor, Robert (2007). Smoot's Ear: The Measure of Humanity. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. pp. 166. ISBN 0-300-12492-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=8kg-t6xsv48C&pg=PA166&dq=%22Adolf+Zeising%22&output=html&sig=ACfU3U3HRKcclUiALtGnFWLPeRlmyWz9hA. . Hermann Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland, 1868, discusses Zeising on pp. 306-309 and reports Fechner's critique in Archiv fuer zeichnende Kuenste, 1865, p.100, that the golden ratio measurements of the Holbein and Sixtini Madonnas do not agree, whereby Fechner concluded that Raphael avoided rather than sought the golden ratio in painting. Lotze himself is sceptical, but he finds Fechner's experiments using surveys of viewers promising.

References