The Golden Mean reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
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Golden Mean

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For those mathematically inclined--See Golden ratio.

The Golden Mean is a mathematical expression of proportion that the Greeks observed in nature. It is called by several names, The Divine Proportion, The Golden Section and The Golden ratio. The Latin poet Horace coined the term aurea mediocritas.

The Golden mean is the middle between two extremes; the one of excess and the other of deficiency. This golden mean is an attribute of beauty. There are three concomitants of Beauty: symmetry, proportion, and harmony. This triad of principles infused their life. They were very much attuned to beauty as an object of love and something that was to be imitated and reproduced in their lives, architecture, paideia and politics. They judged life by this mentality. This mentality is called aestheticism.

The earliest representation of this idea is probably in the mythological Cretan tale of Daedalus and Icarus, Daedlus, a famous artist of his time, built feathered wings for himself and his son so that they might escape the clutches of King Minos. Daedlus warns his son to "fly the middle course", between the sea spray and the sun's heat. Icarus did not listen to his father and flew up and up till the sun melted the wax of his wings and he fell to his death.

Another early elaboration is the pithy laconic Doric saying carved on the front of the temple at Delphi: “Nothing in Excess”.

Socrates teaches that a man “must know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible.” (1)

In education, Socrates asks what effect an exclusive devotion to gymnastic or the exclusive devotion to music. It either “produced a temper of hardness and ferocity, (or) the other of softness and Effeminacy”. (2) But having both will produce harmony, hence beauty and the good.

Something that was disproportionate was evil and something to be despised. They hated extremes. Plato says, “If we disregard due proportion by giving anything what is too much for it; (i.e.) too much canvas to a boat, too much nutriment to a body, too much authority to a soul, the consequence is always shipwreck.” (3)

Plato in the Laws, uses this in his critique of governments. In his opus magnum of the perfect state, he says, “Conducted in this way, the election will strike a mean between monarchy and democracy,…”. (4)

In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle writes on the virtues. His constant phrase is, “… is the Middle state between …”. His psychology of the soul and its virtues is based on the golden mean between the extremes. (5) In the Politics, Aristotle critizes the Spartan Polity by critiquing the disproportionate elements of the constitution; i.e. they trained the men and not the women and they trained for war but not peace. (5a) This disharmony produced difficulties which he elaborates on.

In architecture, the golden mean is the ideal relationships of mass and line which the Greeks perfected over time. This finds its perfection in the Parthenon. This can be compared to one of the first examples of Greek temple building, the temple of Poseidon at Paestum, Italy as it is squat and unelegant.

Table of contents
1 Sayings
2 Miscellanea
3 References
4 Related Sites
5 Bibliography

Sayings

Miscellanea

References

Related Sites

Bibliography