Why we teach geometry
At the School of Traditional Arts, we recognise geometry as the link between all the sacred and traditional arts, which is why its importance is emphasised throughout educational programmes.
About geometry
We teach geometry as a creative practice that draws on and unites the insight of the head, the practical skill of the hand, and the wisdom of the heart.
At whatever level geometry is taught in our courses, it is experienced as a universal language transcending background, nationality or creed. It is a rigorous discipline that can lead to transformation and, through systematic study, to recognition and participation in the originality which underlies all the traditional arts.
Geometry over the centuries
Since ancient times, human beings have explored and practised its orderly discipline and the laws governing the properties of point, line, plane, and solid. Each civilization has used it in some way.
It was one of the Seven Liberal Arts studied at Plato’s Academy and, until relatively recently, was vitally important in the education of those who sought knowledge. While Greek mathematicians, such as Euclid, are well known for their work, the geometric principles they codified were instantiated long before their time in artworks and buildings such as the pyramids of Egypt, the Lo-Shu diagrams in China, and ancient fire altars in India. As Socrates teaches Glaucon in Plato’s Republic, ‘Geometry is the knowledge of the eternally existent.’
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Need for a Sacred Science, Curzon Press, 1993“This order is, moreover, related to an incredible harmony, which in the technically musical sense, pervades the realms of nature, from the stars to subatomic particles. The proportion of the parts of animals and plants, of crystal structures or of planetary movements, when studied geometrically from the point of view of traditional or Pythagorean mathematics, reveals the presence of a harmony pervading all orders of the universe. It is as if the whole cosmos were music congealed into the very substance of things.”
Geometry in nature
Geometry is a reflection of the creative energy at the heart of nature. The compass first draws the circle; symbol of unity and the infinite ‘whole’, and mother of all shapes and forms.
If the first Creative Principle of manifestation can be symbolised by the point at the centre of the circle, then the innumerable points on the circumference relate to the centre as reflections, and in these innumerable relations is Being. The cosmos can be visualised as the circle, with each part connected directly to the centre by a radius which symbolises its relationship to the Creative Principle. In geometry, as in the manifested world, there is infinite variety in essential unity.
Beauty in nature
Nature’s beauty consists of the harmonious interaction between straight line and curve, crystalline and biomorphic. Nature’s many examples of absolute beauty have inspired architects, artists, and craftspeople through the ages.
In every culture, traditional artisans have used basic geometric principles and transformed them into complex, sophisticated patterns and architectural forms, expressing their love of beauty and creation. In their focused and attentive learning and practice of geometry, students can experience the beauty of the order of nature – a beauty connecting the whole of creation.
