Quite inadvertently, I stumbled onto an interesting ancient shape known as the Brunes Star.
Here’s what it looks like:
While it might not look like much, it was used as a sort of ancient calculator:
Here’s an example of how it was used:
Almost like having a calculator or slide rule before these things were invented.
Comments
3 responses to “improving on nature”
Whatever you do, don’t examine music.
(Chuckled.)
The mathematical symmetry of music is consonant with what you’ve posted.
And they say, there is no God.
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I am intrigued by the way that geometric diagrams (carefully drawn, and memorable as artistic devices) can be turned into rulers.
That is, rulers as measuring devices, not rulers as kings.
(Eymological aside: we have a concept of a ‘ruled-line’, a device marked at regular intervals according to the standard adopted by the sovereign. We also have the word ‘ruler’, for the sovereign person who may have defined that system. Which definition came first?)
This knowledge is interesting. It also shows how people who needed to construct measuring devices used the tools they had at hand to construct them. And they turned knowledge gained by a few savants (Euclid and his students) into a mnemonic that could be reproduced by people who hadn’t studied the entire system of geometry.
People of past ages may not have had the tools that 21st-century humans do. But they had tools and skills in common use that we no longer have.
They have the look and feel of a hack, or a work-around. But these work-arounds were working around the fact that standardized measuring devices didn’t exist.
The combination of use-of-learning, innovation, ingenuity, and artisan knowledge that developed this system is pretty amazing.
Wow… sweet!