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The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (Hardcover)

by Mario Livio (Author) "The famous British physicist Lord Kelvin (William Thomson; 1824-1907), after whom the degrees in the absolute temperature scale are named, once said in a lecture:..." (more)

1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books (A Division of Bantam Doubleday Del; 1 edition (17 Jan 2003)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0767908155
ISBN-13: 978-0767908153
Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 2.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 577,294 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Synopsis

Offers a look at phi, or "the golden ratio," discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago, examining the meaning of this remarkable mathematical proportion in terms of science, biology, philosophy, and other fields.

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First Sentence
The famous British physicist Lord Kelvin (William Thomson; 1824-1907), after whom the degrees in the absolute temperature scale are named, once said in a lecture: "When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind." Read the first page

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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More like the Golden Bore, 3 April 2004

By	Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (Paperback)

What a depressing book this turned out to be. I thought a book about the "golden section" would have been interesting but in the hands of Mario Livio it is pure pain. To give a few examples... The author discusses the theory that the golden ratio was used by the builders of the pyramids and refutes it easily. And then continues to refute it for page after page. Then he does the same thing with the Parthenon, destroying the theory using the exact same reasons he used for the pyramid, explaining them in the same level of detail. But he isn't done yet. We get to have the same discussion again when we look at Renaissance paintings. I didn't really care about the discussion when discussing the pyramids but by the time I heard the argument for the third time I was ready to find something else to read. As he discusses the history of the golden section he goes into side trips to discuss anyone who had even the slightest relationship with phi. Anyone who has never heard of Kepler may find this interesting even if it is irrelevant to phi but I just started skimming pages hoping for something a little meatier. There is a little spark here and there that kept me reading hoping for more but more never arrived. A writer with a greater interest in the mathematics of phi could have made this a fun and interesting book. Livio seems to think the math is boring so he avoids it like the plague and creates a book that completely misses the point and ends up being a total bore.

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