Zeising - Ghyka - Le Corbusier
In his blog Chris Impens mentions two prominent persons in the spread of the ideas of Zeising: Matu-ila Ghyka en Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as the architect Le Corbusier.
Ghyka was a Romenian diplomat who produced a lot of publications and... Le Corbusier possesed some of them:
- Esthétique des proportions dans la nature et dans les arts
(Esthetics of proportions in nature and art), 1927
- Le nombre d'or — rites et rythmes pythagoriciens dans le développement de la civilisation occidentale
(The golden number — Pythagorean rites en rythms in the developement of western civilisation), 1931
The geometry of art and life (1946) gives an insight to his ideas.
Ghyka follows the ideas of Zeising, and writes about
"the dominant role of the gulden section in the proportions of the human body, rediscovered by Zeysing, who recognised its importance in the morphology of fauna and flora, Greek architecture and music."
He also wrote Zeysing had observed the Parthenon and:
"already noticed that Φ was the fundamental ratio for this façade". Zeising indeed was the first in pointing to the golden section in the facade of the Partenon, also mentioning its dimensions:
- widt = 107 feet
- height = 65 feet
- sum = 172 feet
According to the golden section this should match with .
Count along:
According Zeising both fractions, except for one insignificant detail, match with its ideal...
Even taken into account that the dimensions were rounded, they clearly fall outside the margin of error. Zeising isn't just the inventor of the gulden section as universal criterion, he's also the inventor of statements as "it's about" or "it's approximately", still abundantly used in golden section claims. 
