Overview

This book analyzes the widespread tendency since the Renaissance to see shapes as symmetric when they are not. Such misperceptions are buttressed by other fallacies. Among them: that Nature's forms are symmetric and that therefore nothing we make or build can be beautiful unless it too is symmetrically shaped. Another fallacy: that the ancient Greeks and Romans always gave the things they made or built symmetric shapes. In fact, our concept of symmetry was not known to the Ancients - they had the word but used it for other things. A common symmetry fallacy is that snowflakes and bees cells are symmetric. Kepler and Darwin are among those who lent their name to this fallacy, for which there is no evidence at all. Another common fallacy is that the arts and crafts of primitive peoples are always symmetric (there's no evidence that they ever are...) These and related fallacies have had a powerful influence on Western civilization - not just in garden design and architecture but in morphology and other fields of science. Selzer offers a challenging theory of why symmetry fallacies came into being - it arose, he suggests, in response to the fear that accompanied the Black Death and the terrible succession of plagues that followed it.

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