Roof line at Casa Hassan, Chefchaouen, Morocco.

Driving through the Washington, DC, suburbs, it’s easy to feel the wonder has been stripped from the world. Gas is 3.699 per gallon. A bright red sign in shop windows advertises 50% off spring merchandise. People on the side of the street hold signs reading “Closeout: Leather Living Furniture. Everything Must Go!” or “Vietnam Veteran. Homeless. Please Help. God Bless.” Talk radio transmits news and events in far off places. I sit passively behind the wheel of my car, surrounded by steel.

It is easy to forget that shapes have simple, integrated language. The beautiful geometry expressed by nature, which illustrates unified design, is too often clouded by shapes and messages of our design, born of disconnected purposes. Snowflakes, brilliantly designed beehives, ocean waves, and artful splatters of raindrops are obscured by our own overlapping, disconnected creations. Pavement, marginalized sidewalks, haphazard buildings swallowed by parking lots scar the suburban landscape.

I once had a job that required me to work in an office building that was located in a Chili’s restaurant parking lot. The outside of the building was made of neatly formed squares. The interior was cut into rooms of varying shape and no apparent order. A small wall covered half my office window. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how much of a negative impact this had on my feelings towards my job. The poor design of the building seemed symbolic of the organizational difficulties that plagued management. I left after six months.

Today, at least in the suburbs, we are surrounded by examples of thoughtless design. Constrasting ideads compete for our attention. But, language, mathematics, and design once formed an integrated method for communicating the underlying unified order of creation. Mathematics was much more than a way to measure quantities. Geometrical constructions, including language and architecture, were used to inspire creative processes and reflect the order of the universe. In fact, the word universe means “one turn” in Latin, reflecting the one turn of the compass required to make a circle, the symbol of the cosmos.

Before we had words and numbers, we used basic shapes for expression. In around 8000 BC people began to use tokens, such as a cone or sphere, to communicate quantities of grain or oil. The number and shape of the tokens indicated the quantity of the represented object. Five was not yet a concept separate from the existence of five specific objects. Gradually, the design of the tokens became more complex, but they began as simple shapes.

For philosophical mathematicians and ancient civilizations there was an intimate link between language, mathematics, and design. The ancient Greek Pythagoras who lived around 500 BC founded a religious philosophy that centered on mathematics as the ultimate reality. Observing the patterns of life around him, he searched for the commonality in all existence and found it in number. He was the first person to call himself a philosopher, lover of wisdom, and had a great influence on the philosophers who followed him, such as Plato. “Both Pythagoras and Plato suggested all citizens learn the properties of the first ten numbers as a form of moral instruction.”

Parthenon, temple of Athena

Numbers, language, and design represented a unified view of the cosmos. “Archetypes of numbers and shape were personified…as various gods, goddesses, and world-builders. Temples were designed according to geometric proportions of the represented deity.” By associating specific numbers with corresponding letters, words resulted in sums that matched the associated meaning of the word and number. For example, seven was known as the “virgin” because no number below seven divides into. Consequently, seven doesn’t “reproduce” any other number below 10 in the way eight, for example, reproduces four or six reproduces three. “Through gematria, the Greek letters of the name of the maiden goddess Athena add up to seventy-seven.” Careful design principals applicable to her name and value were applied in constructing her temple, the Parthenon.

Rockville Pike sky photo snatched from Flickr

Driving through the suburbs of DC, I see little to reflect a unity. Through my windshield, I see design that stampedes life. Marginalized sidewalks, congested streets, haphazard buildings with walk-ways impeded by parking lots. As one of the most developed nations on Earth, I wonder why, in this affluent suburb, I can find nearly any product available to mankind, yet shapes and constructions seem random, based on budget and compromise rather than beauty, expression, and faith. Driving down Rockville Pike, my eyes find little by way of geometric beauty, at least, without hard effort on the part of my mind.

How much more beautiful our society would be if we could use thoughts, messages, and numbers, to inspire instead applying them only to isolated purposes?

Modern building in Marrakesh, Morocco

In this age of information overload, I am making a call to remember the art of geometry. Geometry requires no measurement. It is ruled by proportion. It can offer us peace of mind instead of painfully disconnected specificity. We must return to our roots and remember that the world is a wonderful, orderly, interconnected place.

We could buy the bold geometry that has made its way into fashion. Cheap options are now available at Old Navy via their 2008 spring collection. Or, we could pull out a compass and find our center. Both are easy to do.

As my hairdresser said, “Life is short. Live pretty.”

All quotes are taken from the brilliant book, Beginners Guide to Constructing the Universe.

To read more about the use of tokens and the origins of mathematics, read Tokens: The Origins of Mathematics published online by Duncan J. Melville at the St. Lawrence University, NY.

Picture of Sumerian tokens from around 3000 BC taken from the Schoyen Collection website.