From Summetria to Symmetry: The Making of a Revolutionary Concept
2015; Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science; Volume: 6; Linguagem: Inglês
10.33137/aestimatio.v6i0.25909
ISSN1549-4497
AutoresGiora Hon, Bernard R. Goldstein, Joseph W. Dauben,
ResumoThe basic idea of this fascinating book is that while symmetry has often been regarded as an innate concept of the human mind, there is no historical evidence to support this; and that in fact, the understanding of symmetry is basically a product of the 18th century.As the authors argue, there are two major aspects to this matter, one aesthetic, the other mathematical, both converging on the figures of Adrien-Marie Legendre, who was the first to formulate an exact mathematical definition of symmetry in terms of what he called 'incongruent counterparts', and Gaspard Monge, who was the first to use the term 'symmetry' in a textbook on statics written for students in the French naval academy (wherein symmetry was applied to the problem of determining the center of gravity of ships).In their consideration of the aesthetic aspects of the history of symmetry, the authors consider such thinkers as Plato and Archimedes, Galen, Vitruvius, Alberti, Dürer, Perrault, Montesquieu, and Diderot; whereas the mathematical side of the story includes the works of (again) Plato and Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Boethius, Oresme, Kepler, Galileo, Barrow, and Newton, among others.Noteworthy is the authors' attention to such matters as the subject of harmony and its relations to symmetry in studies of the impact of Vitruvius on Copernicus and the architectural conception of a planetary system, Galileo and the significance of harmony in music, Kepler and Descartes on the structure of snowflakes, and the extent to which both Kepler and Leibniz regarded harmony as a fundamental concept in astronomy and metaphysics.The authors also consider the appearance of symmetry in natural history, specifically in the contexts of botany, crystallography, and zoology.
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