The Seba library treats Golden Mean in 8 passages, across 3 authors (including McGilchrist, Iain, Alfred Huang, Keltner, Dacher).
what is intended by the Golden Mean: not a flabby compromise, but a position in which taut synergy produces a dynamic equipoise.
McGilchrist argues the Golden Mean is systematically misunderstood as mere moderation, and insists it names instead a condition of living tension between genuine opposites, citing Schleiermacher's critique of 'dull mediocrity' as what the misreading produces.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
We often represent the Golden Mean as a midpoint on an adynamic line, a position that understandably does not appeal to some people,
McGilchrist identifies the prevalent but erroneous representation of the Golden Mean as a static midpoint and uses this to argue for a richer, dynamically tensioned understanding of balance.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
From this gua Confucius gained insight concerning the principle of the Golden Mean. In his Doctrine of the Golden Mean, Confucius says, Under Heaven, only the person possessing the most complete sincerity and trustworthiness is able to fully develop his true nature.
Huang locates the Confucian Doctrine of the Golden Mean in the I Ching hexagram of Innermost Sincerity, grounding the principle in inner authenticity and its cosmological extension to Heaven and Earth.
, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998supporting
In the visual world certain proportions, such as the Golden Ratio (φ) which is found repeatedly in nature, are experienced as intrinsically beautiful.
McGilchrist links the Golden Ratio — the mathematical cousin of the Golden Mean — to intrinsic aesthetic experience, arguing that its approximate, irrational nature exemplifies how reality exceeds precise specification.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the golden ratio is arrived at mathematically by taking any number you like, dividing 1 by it, adding 1, and repeating the process an infinite number of times. Whatever number you start with, you converge on a number that is approximately 1.618
McGilchrist demonstrates that the Golden Ratio is an irrational convergent, intrinsically resistant to exact rational specification, which he reads as symptomatic of a deeper reality that can be approached but never fully captured.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
There are patterns in nature beyond their physical form, and their deeper resonances make me sense a Golden Mean within us.
Keltner's subject invokes the Golden Mean as an interior, numinous geometry sensed through awe at natural forms, connecting sacred proportion to felt psychological experience.
, Awe The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can, 2023supporting
the traditional aesthetic effects of the golden section may well be real, but that if they are, they are fragile as well.
McGilchrist reviews empirical literature on the golden section, noting that experimental support is consistent but fragile, situating the aesthetic claim for the Golden Mean in an epistemically uncertain register.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
Repeated efforts to show them to be illusory have, in many instances, been followed up by efforts that have restored them, even when taking the latest round of criticism into account.
McGilchrist documents the dialectical empirical debate over the Golden Section's aesthetic effects, lending scholarly ballast to his broader argument about the reality of beauty as a cosmological constant.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside