Intelligent Design

By Coincidence or By Design

I am starting to read a book called, "A Little Book of Coincidence in the Solar System" by John Martineau.

He writes,
"Funnily enough, scientists are are currently puzzling over the strange fact that the whole universe seems special. There is exactly enough material in the universe to make it, and the ratios between the fundamental forces and physical constants seem specifically tuned to produce an amazingly complex, beautiful, and enduring universe. Fiddle with any bit of it, even slightly, and you get a universe of black holes, insubstantial fizzballs, or other lifeless set-ups. Is this design or coincidence?"

I have heard arguments on the topic of Intelligent Design boil down to this very question. But why? Why are design and coincidence mutually exclusive? Opposites? Why not cooperative forces in creation?

When I ponder my own design processes, I would say that although I am the conscious creator or at least the curator of each element I apply to any given layout, I cannot say for sure that cooincidence, or chance does not enter into the process and affect the outcome of any given composition.

I feel certain there is a Designer of the Universe. But to personify that Designer might lead us down the path towards splitting intention (design) from intuition (coincidence). Maybe the Designer is that same force that runs through each of us as we create our worldly works. It is a force that draws from an existing wellspring of material knowledge while accepting influence from attunement to the unknowable truth of the matter at hand.

The Divine Section: 101

The Divine Section, also known as the Golden Ratio, is the first principle of nature's design I could think of and that I have already put into occasional use in my design work. As I began researching it, the concept became more and more interesting.

The Divine Section is a line segment sectioned into two according to the golden ratio. The total length "a+b" is to the longer segment "a" as "a" is to the shorter segment "b"

Zeising wrote in 1854:
The Golden Ratio is a universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.

The Divine Section is seen in Nature in the human body's proportions among other things. It is also linked to the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Spiral. I hope to explore these interlinked concepts in future posts. I also hope to explore the underlying ideas linking these concepts together, and the purpose of these designs in nature.