In addition to Pastor Allen's citing of the number phi (yesterday's blog post) as an evidence of God's design in creation, there is also the Fibonacci sequence.
I first discovered this concept in the book, Repairing he Ruins: The Classical and Christian Challenge in Modern Education. From that work, Jam Nance explains this mathematical phenomenon:
"Imagine you are playing number games. You start with 1 and 1, and add them together to get 2. You add that to the previous number and get 3. Add that to the previous number and you obtain 5. Continue this procedure and ther result is the following sequence...
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987,1597...
Now, what is so special about this sequence? Plenty. Examine a pine cone and you will see two spirals winding around in opposite directions. Count the spirals, and guess what, the number of spirals is always two consecutive numbers in this sequence, such as 5 and 8, or 8 and 13. This is no mere coincidence. The same is true of the center of sunflowers (which have 55 spirals one way and 89 the other), daisies, artichokes, and many other naturally occurring spirals. Examples of this pattern of numbers in nature abound."
At this point Nance goes on to quote several eminent mathematicians who bascially all say that this sequence is a mystery and there is no explanation for it. Nance concludes:
"Applied mathematics makes sense only with God-centered presuppositions and if mathematicians continue to build on unbelieving foundations, it will all come tumbling down."
No comments:
Post a Comment