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What about sacred geometry?

Russell asks:

Question

Have you ever heard of or read about a subject referred to as sacred geometry? if so what is your opinion.

Thanks!

Answer

Yes, I have heard of sacred geometry. I just finished reading The Sacred Geometry of Washington, D.C. by Nicholas R. Mann.

Sacred geometry has nothing to do with feng shui or science (notice the Wikipedia article relates to occultism and New Age concepts, and explains sacred geometry as a belief system). It seems that sacred geometry is one more idea developed by creationists and New Agers to make money and to turn our brains into oatmeal.

The contemporary mythos of sacred geometry was largely invented in the academic fiction of John Michell. (Read The Crest of the Peacock by George Gheverghese Joseph to see what I mean by “academic fiction.”)

  • Feng shui is several thousand years older and is based on astronomy.
  • Chinese geometry is very different from Western geometry. They developed independently.
  • Real archaeologists easily deflate the core myths, and relegate sacred geometry to “fringe” or “cult” archaeology, better known as pseudoarchaeology (defined as “hare-brained ideas about material remains from our past, most often assigning some special and/or supernatural significance to an object or group of objects”).

    That does not mean real archaeologists do not read cult archaeology books. How else could academics so easily dismantle the pet theories of Graham Hancock and others? (Dr Ed Krupp smartly unravels the claims about the Sphinx; in this article he exposes the sham behind an alleged “Orion mystery.”)

  • A commonsense look at the evidence, based on sound reasoning, generally concludes with a dismissal of the sacred geometry concept:

    … a culture that relied on compass-and-straight-edge geometry rather than arithmetic to design structures would not give a fig that some of the lengths turned out to be irrational numbers. The numbers (or rather, the lengths they represented) would simply appear during the course of construction and that would be that.

  • Based on search engine results, it appears that websites promoting sacred geometry are all from “true believers” — people who look for evidence that conforms to their beliefs, not people who let the evidence speak for itself. You receive an indoctrination — a recitation of the mythos — rather than a methodical, soundly reasoned examination of abundant evidence.

People who embrace the idea of sacred geometry are convinced by a romantic story and their own inclination to belief systems, not by the preponderance of evidence.

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