When we look around us, it’s impossible not to notice symmetry. But why is that? Why do so many different things have an uncanny resemblance to each other?
Symmetry, a concept that’s been around since ancient times, plays a major role in most things around us. It can be used to evoke feelings of serenity and peacefulness in our lives. Once we understand how symmetry works, it becomes easy to see why this is true: symmetry shows up everywhere!
Let us look at some quotes about symmetry and the thoughts of famous personalities about it.
Symmetry – All around us?
Symmetry is all around us—in nature, in art forms like music or architecture (symmetry is often found in the ancient Greek Parthenon), and even inside ourselves in organs. Symmetry is all around us, check out the following interesting real-life examples that we encounter every day.
- Ice crystals are symmetrical. Symmetry is present in all of them. Whether you consider snowflakes or the ice cubes used to cool our drinks. The symmetry of an ice crystal lies in its shape and size. It also exhibits a specific orientation.
- A butterfly’s wings are symmetrical. This means that one side of its body is the same as the other. This is called bilateral symmetry and it’s common in many animals (including humans).
- The fragrant Jasmine flowers that are so popular, have bilateral symmetry. If you rotate the flower by 180 degrees, it will look exactly the same. This symmetry helps attract pollinators like bees, butterflies, and other insects. The feature of symmetry makes jasmine flowers one of the most commonly used plants in floral designs.
- The snail’s shell is an example of radial symmetry. It has two spirals running from one end to the other. They are arranged in parallel lines on either side of the center line. The number of spirals can vary. The direction of coiling is almost the same in the entire species.
- Pinecones are an example of symmetry occurring in nature. They are bilaterally symmetrical, and radially symmetrical, and are a good example of a repeating pattern. In a pinecone, the patterns are either clockwise or anticlockwise in occurrence.
- Sea urchins are an example of symmetry found in underwater life. The shell of a sea urchin is made up of a number of different types of cells, which are arranged in concentric layers around a central disk. Each layer has its own unique function and structure and helps in the protection of the organism. The adult sea urchin exhibits a five-fold symmetry.
- Honeycomb cells show a hexagonal pattern. As they are hexagonal they will always have six sides. The cells of the honeycomb appear like symmetrical prisms.
Quotes highlighting the beauty of symmetry
1. Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself. – Plotinus
2. We take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.– Nicole Krauss
3. The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm in form as well as in sound, is one of the most inveterate of human instincts.- Edith Wharton
4.Tidiness is a virtue, symmetry is often a constituent of beauty.– Winston Churchill
5. Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference. – Blaise Pascal
6. If measure and symmetry are absent from any composition to any degree, ruin awaits both the ingredients and the composition… Measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue the world over. – Socrates
7. There`s poetry in nature. A symmetry. – Saffron A. Kent
8. Reality favors symmetry.- Jorge Luis Borges
9. Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty, and perfection.- Hermann Weyl
10. Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.– Larry Wall
11. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate to a special degree.– Aristotle
12. Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring. – John Herschel
13. There is no symmetry in nature. One eye is never exactly the same as the other.– Edouard Manet
14. Reality is partial to symmetry and slight anachronisms– Jorge Luis Borges
15. The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.- Paul Valery
16. Symmetry looks good to us; we want more of it.- Susan Messing
17. The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations, and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.– Aristotle
18. It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details. – Henri Poincare
19. The most general law in nature is the equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency. – Herbert Read
20. Don’t confuse symmetry with balance.- Tom Robbins
21. Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art. – George Bernard Shaw
22. If the proportion is the good breeding of architecture, symmetry, or the answering of one part to another, may be defined as the sanity of decoration. – Edith Wharton
23. The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges. – Herman Melville
24. Humanity enveloped in entropy desperately seeking symmetry for peace of mind – Dean Cavanagh
25. Symmetry may have its appeal but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation.- Marcelo Gleiser
26. We find, therefore, under this orderly arrangement, a wonderful symmetry in the universe, and a definite relation of harmony in the motion and magnitude of the orbs, of a kind that is not possible to obtain in any other way. – Johannes Kepler
27. The biggest conceptual change over the last 100 years in the way physicists think about the world is symmetry – Lawrence M. Krauss
28. I attain a different kind of beauty, achieve symmetry by means of infinite discords, showing all the traces of the mind’s passage through the world, and achieve in the end some kind of whole made of shivering fragments.- Virginia Woolf
29. Everybody has two legs, and two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.- Gore Vidal
30. The universe is an enormous direct product of representations of symmetry groups. – Steven Weinberg
31. Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another.- George Herbert
32. You can’t chop down a symmetry – Jane Siberry
33. The mile has a classic symmetry….It’s a play in four acts. – John Landy
34. Doubt, skepticism, innovation, and inquiry are the only means by which wonder, beauty, awe, and symmetry will be discovered. – Christopher Hitchens
35. I don’t know if it’s a sign of all the chaos that is happening out there or not, but I’ve lately craved the structure and order of classical music, balance, and symmetry. – Helen Reddy
36. If you look at music, you see the theme, and variation, you see symmetry and asymmetry, and you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world.– Dave Van Ronk
37. In the simplest array of digits [Ramanujan] detected wonderful properties: congruences, symmetries, and relationships that had escaped the notice of even the outstandingly gifted theoreticians. – James R Newman
38. Architecture depends on Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry, Propriety, and Economy. – Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
39. Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness. – Eric Temple Bell
40. The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect. –Paul Valery
Conclusion
To wrap up, symmetry is everywhere, and we can find it when we look at nature. So the next time you see a butterfly, an octopus arm, or a honeycomb cell, take a moment to appreciate that symmetry is not just a mathematical concept but also something that exists in the world around us.
We want everything to be symmetrical because it makes us feel good about ourselves – and therefore makes us more aware overall! Symmetry adds that element of beauty to everything. Since ancient times, man has been trying to replicate nature’s symmetry in everything he creates, in the quest for perfection.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,