< PREVIOUS    -   NEXT >

Mandalora

Pheasant, duck

Michael S. Schneider writes in
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing
the Universe:

“Ancient mathematical philosophers did not consider one and two to be numbers themselves since their representations – point and line – are not actual.  A point has no dimension and a line just one dimension… But an ongoing interplay beginning with a point and line is all that’s required to construct the world’s geometric patterns.  Thus, the Monad and Dyad were considered by the ancients to be not numbers but the parents of numbers.  Their mating, the fusion of the principles of one and two, point and line, unity and difference gives birth to all subsequent archetypal principles revealed as numbers, symbolized by numerals, and seen as shapes in nature.  The Dyad, then, is the doorway between the One and the Many… This is the geometric lesson of the two linked circles, symbol of the Dyad.  The almond-shaped zone of interpenetration between the circles has attracted the attention of geometers, artists, architects and mythmakers through history… It’s called a mandorla (“almond”) in India.” 

But, I found the sound of Mandalora more pleasing and indulged artistic whim.

   Photo:  Mark Miskill