The Nautilus shell is also ingrained in my memory with UWF. When I first arrived in Pensacola with my wife and newborn to take a position at UWF we would go in late summer to Pensacola beach. There we would sit, watch the sunset and Gulf Coast fisherman cast from the pier. We would also find shells for the baby to hold and later take home for her collection.
Later, I noticed the large Nautilus shell delineated at the front drop off and embedded in UWF’s stairway spiral architecture for the wellness centre entrance. Coming from U Miami, I was fascinated by the symbolic architecture built into UWF’s external environment – there was a synchronicity with U Miami’s campus where a labyrinth similarly symbolically adorned the university near the wellness centers. Labyrinths. Shells. Symbols. Metaphors. Shapes and journeys.
A little later, after redesigning the libraries website, the Curriculum Materials Library Director, Jeannie Kamerman came to my office with a few aesthetic recommendations and a copy of H.E. Huntley’s “Divine Proportions”. Divine Proportions was a former Harvard math prof’s work surveying geometric structure in science and the arts. Discussions ranged from biological growth to Pythogorean theory and Fibonacci series. On the cover of Huntley’s book was a mathematical schema with the ‘divine proportions of the Nautilus, a natural example of a logarithmic spiral. Jeannie’s husband was a well known Pensacola sculptor, whose pieces later appropriately adorned the Dean’s office. Symbols of Silence. Somehow, with the confluence of memories, I associate UWF and the Nautilus shell – biological/mathematical model of growth, mysterious, hard to penetrate, pragmatic, enduring natural beauty.
Comment by Ray Uzwyshyn — @
Turns out the Nautilus shell doesn’t correspond with the Fibonacci spiral…although you didn’t say that it did. I find it interesting that with most things in nature that this particularly shell doesn’t match up. My question is can this difference be explained by way of nature or by God?
The Nautilus shell is also ingrained in my memory with UWF. When I first arrived in Pensacola with my wife and newborn to take a position at UWF we would go in late summer to Pensacola beach. There we would sit, watch the sunset and Gulf Coast fisherman cast from the pier. We would also find shells for the baby to hold and later take home for her collection.
Later, I noticed the large Nautilus shell delineated at the front drop off and embedded in UWF’s stairway spiral architecture for the wellness centre entrance. Coming from U Miami, I was fascinated by the symbolic architecture built into UWF’s external environment – there was a synchronicity with U Miami’s campus where a labyrinth similarly symbolically adorned the university near the wellness centers. Labyrinths. Shells. Symbols. Metaphors. Shapes and journeys.
A little later, after redesigning the libraries website, the Curriculum Materials Library Director, Jeannie Kamerman came to my office with a few aesthetic recommendations and a copy of H.E. Huntley’s “Divine Proportions”. Divine Proportions was a former Harvard math prof’s work surveying geometric structure in science and the arts. Discussions ranged from biological growth to Pythogorean theory and Fibonacci series. On the cover of Huntley’s book was a mathematical schema with the ‘divine proportions of the Nautilus, a natural example of a logarithmic spiral. Jeannie’s husband was a well known Pensacola sculptor, whose pieces later appropriately adorned the Dean’s office. Symbols of Silence. Somehow, with the confluence of memories, I associate UWF and the Nautilus shell – biological/mathematical model of growth, mysterious, hard to penetrate, pragmatic, enduring natural beauty.
Comment by Ray Uzwyshyn — @
Turns out the Nautilus shell doesn’t correspond with the Fibonacci spiral…although you didn’t say that it did. I find it interesting that with most things in nature that this particularly shell doesn’t match up. My question is can this difference be explained by way of nature or by God?
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/6030/title/Sea_Shell_Spirals
http://www.shallowsky.com/blog/science/fibonautilus.html
Comment by Art — @