Eye Candy

What do the Egyptian pyramids, the Mona Lisa and George Clooney’s face all have in common? The “golden ratio” according to The Independent writer Steve Connor. “The ancient Egyptian pyramids, the Parthenon of Athens, Mona Lisa’s face and the head of George Clooney all have one thing in common. Their attractiveness is said to be based on the ‘golden ratio’, which is supposed to be the most aesthetically pleasing shape to the human eye. The golden ratio, also known as the divine proportion, produces a shape similar to a widescreen television or a cinema screen and describes a rectangle with a length roughly one and half times its width. The proportion is said to pervade art, architecture and nature… Now a theoretical mathematician has come up with what he believes is a possible reason why the human eye finds shapes in these proportions so particularly appealing. It comes down to how easy it is for the eye and the brain to scan such an image for important details, based on our evolutionary history.”