SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE GEOMETRIC CAUSE OF THE GOLDEN MEAN

RELATIONSHIPS IN NATURE

A RESPONSE TO KEPLER

BY MICHAEL CARR

August 14, 1993

PREFATORY NOTE: For quite some time now I have been

examining geometrical aspects of solid state fusion, the
Moon-Hecht nuclear model and the Platonic solids. In the course
of this work I stumbled across an apparently "unrelated" idea
which may help to demystify the cause of the Golden Mean ratio
in Nature. Although I have briefly discussed this with various
people, it really requires a more thoroughly developed
presentation in written form to facilitate discussion. I hope
you will find this useful and stimulating.
Comments, criticisms and other ideas will be greatly
appreciated.
 SOLID" OR LATTICE GEOMETRIES

Even though we have spent years trying to develop the

outlook that action (whether cycloidal, conical, circular etc.)
should form the basis of measure, it remains the case that when
we look at "solid matter" we tend to axiomatically superimpose a
Cartesian coordinate structure upon it. For example, the number
pi is an artifact of the process of measuring circular action in
a totally arbitrary superimposed and unrelated metric.
Even in crystallography there are artifacts of this
problem. For example the very common structure which is closest
packed around a central sphere or atom which results in a
cubeoctahedral configuration is labeled the "face centered
cubic arrangement;" this name is completely misleading as to the
cause, nature and significance of this structure. I was
recently shocked to see an exhibit in the Houston Museum of
Natural History purporting to show that an octahedral crystal of
a mineral is actually built of tiny cubes which form stepped or
sawtooth edges which "are too small for the naked eye to
see"!!! Octahedral minerals are no more composed of tiny cubes
than are human beings.
Let's digress for a moment to do a little geometrical
experimentation; we'll return to our main theme in a moment.
Suppose that you were to attempt to create a crystal or
lattice of any uniform substance; how would you begin? For
purposes of modelling we could use uniform spheres such as
styrofoam balls or marbles, although to make our structures
clearly intelligible I have found the use of small sticks
(toothpicks bound together with dried peas or mini marshmallows,
or cotton swabs glued together) to make our structures most
clearly visible. Of course most minerals aren't made of uniform
components and mixing marbles and baseballs does have an effect
on what kind of model structures you can create. Similarly, the
number of chemical bonds which an element can make or the
presence of external fields of various types can effect the type
of structures it can compose, but let us see if we can make any
general observations beginning with uniform components having no
special bonding predispositions.
Two marbles together create the minimum relationship (one)
which can be conveniently symbolized by a cotton swab. By adding
one more marble we create two more relationships or two more
cotton swabs and create the triangle. This is the minimum two
dimensional construction: the two legs of each angle are
stabilized by the third leg to create two dimensional tension
and compression strength independent of materials or glue used.
The triangle gives you minimum internal dimensions. If we add
sides to transform the triangle into a quadrilateral or pentagon
etc., we lose compression strength even though we increase
potential internal area. We use the term "potential internal
area" because for polygons beyond the triangle there must be
FIGURE 1
Beyond the triangle only external action, bracing
or "forces" create any regularity to "plane
figure" constructions.

FIGURE 2
CONSTRUCTED TETRAHEDRA
FIGURE 3
CLOSEST PACKING AROUND ONE SPHERE
Notice that the constructed cubeoctahedron is
characterized by four triangulated hexagons
emanating out from the nucleus. When expanded
further outward in each dimension, each vertex
becomes the center of a new cubeoctahedron. Also
notice that the half octahedra which together
with the tetrahedra compose the cubeoctahedron
are combined with other half octahedra so that
the expanded structure which Buckminster Fuller
labeled the "Octet Truss" is actually composed of
octahedra and tetrahedra.
 some external "force" or other bracing structure to maintain
maximum internal area associated with for example a regular
pentagon. Blowing up a balloon inside a cotton swab pentagon
will give us a regular pentagon; without the application of
this internal pressure which puts the cotton swab pentagon into
uniform tension, it has no intrinsic regularity or uniformity
(see Figure 1).
Let us return to our marble model: If we place a fourth
marble atop our triangular base, we create the three dimensional
packing minimum: the tetrahedron. This is as close as closest
packing ever gets; this is the "hardest" any structure ever gets
in terms of compression, independent of materials used (see
Figure 2).
If we keep adding layers to our tetrahedron in military
cannonball fashion, we create a structure or crystal in which
each marble not on an edge or face is surrounded by twelve other
marbles or vertexes in cubeoctahedral array. We notice that
vertexes are arrayed in four hexagonal planes around the central
marble or vertex (see Figure 3). We notice that our structure
is actually composed of tetrahedra and octahedra. We also
notice that this structure contains what I call a structural
cube as opposed to a Platonic cube. (If one were to build a
sguare and then a cube using the same methods described above,
we would discover that no matter how many layers of cubes we add
to one cube, a cube or layers of cubes are inherently unstable
and twist and bend in all directions [see Figure 4]. That is
why architects have to put diagonal stabilizers in buildings. A
stable cube is actually double braced with two tetrahedra: each
tetrahedron makes one diagonal across each face [see Figure 5].
If all vertexes are joined, what I call a structural cube is
created. In the tetrahedral structure we created, find an
octahedron and remove everything around it except the adjoining
tetrahedron on each face; that's a structural cube [see Figure
6]).
So what is the significance of all this? Well, we have
discovered that the tetrahedron, octahedron and cube are all
contained within a closest packing geometry; each is
characterized by hexagonal geometry. Each is in a sense a
transformation of the other (see Figures 7 and 8). Each is
characterized by immediate or entropie communication or
dissipation of "energy" or other impinging "forces" to twelve
eguidistant neighbors in four hexagonal planar patterns. There
is no more efficient way to dissipate "energy" or to communicate
action in a solid than through a hexagonal geometry. As Kepler
refers to this in hypothesizing the cause of the hexagonal
geometry of the snowflake in his On the Six Cornered Snowflake
"...the formative faculty chooses six-corneredness, not under
duress of any material or spatial necessity, but solely because
it is allured by this aptness whereby the hexagon elsewhere can
form a plane without remainder and more than any other shape
with the same capacity resembles a circle."
FIGURE 4
The twelve stick cube model depends on outside or
inside "forces" or bracing to maintain any
semblance of regularity; otherwise you will end
up with a near planar hexagon as the cube
collapses upon itself.

FIGURE 5
TETRAHEDRAL BRACING FOR A STABLE CUBE
FIGURE 6
THE STRUCTURAL CUBE WITHIN CLOSEST PACKING

FIGURE 7
The tetrahedron, octahedron, structural cube and
cubeoctahedron are each found as cuts within
closest packing geometry.
 While Golden Mean characteristics exist in the geometry of
the marble, sphere or atom because of their curvature, hexagonal
geometry predominates in the realm of crystals and compounds.
As we shall see shortly, the break between the geometry of the
tetrahedron, octahedron and cube versus that of the icosahedron
and dodecahedron is as definite as the asteroid belt which
Kepler hypothesized to exist between the inner and outer
planets.
The point to be made here is not that all inorganic
materials exist only in a hexagonal geometry or that living or
organic substances only have pentagonal characteristics; rather
we seek the cause for the very great correlation, noticed by the
ancient Greeks as well as Kepler, between the Golden Mean and
the presence of life. Nor do I mean to imply that all inorganic
substances form structures which can be easily compared to a
closest packed lattice: shortly we shall examine some inorganic
substances with pentagonal surface geometries.
Think instead about what separates the living from the
non-living. The drop of water becoming a snowflake is readily
drained of its heat along hexagonal axes which readily transmit
energy to approaching cold air; crystals and metals, because of
their hexagonal geometries are excellent conductors of energy in
various forms and at various electromagnetic wavelengths. On
the other hand a plant is able to take impinging light energy
and "twist it back upon itself" to conserve it or store it in
"storage rings" (through the excitation of electrons to higher
orbitais) for use in the building of the plant. Living beings
do not just transmit energy but process or "curve into loops" at
least parts of the energy impinging upon them to be used for
various purposes.
Living beings must take stored energy and curve it and
direct it within themselves to accomplish tasks necessary for
survival, growth and reproduction. To facilitate this process,
living beings must build surfaces and channels wich must reflect
the necessity of "curving" or conserving energy. Of course
there is a great difference between curvature of action which is
a continuous process and "curvature" of construction which is a
discrete process; nevertheless, the two are related and both
exhibit the Golden Mean ratio. Pasteur put a great deal of
ground-breaking effort into investigating the effects of this
curvature of constructed organic substances on the refraction of
light; he also hypothesized the connection between curvature and
life. This leads us across the great divide.
 GOLDEN MEAN OR SURFACE GEOMETRIES

Crossing the great Keplerian divide brings us to the realm

of the non-nuclear Platonic solids or surface solids: the
icosahedron and dodecahedron.
Using the same construction methods as above,let's create a
triangulated hexagon. Notice that it can be bent in all sorts
of ways—it has no special curvature (see Figure 9).
Now, remove one side of the triangulated hexagon to create a
triangulated pentagon or end of an icosahedron (see Figure 10).
Now we have created "curvature"—a surface with an inside and an
outside: we have created a structure which does not communicate
action in a plane but deflects action by the minimum uniformly
constructible deflection from the plane. This minimum
deflection is the basis of the Golden Mean or Golden Section
ratio across the inside of the triangulated pentagon.
Now take the same materials and build a row of equilateral
triangles around the perimeter of the triangulated pentagon so
that six cotton swabs converge at each vertex or corner of the
triangulated pentagon. Now connect the extended triangular
"teeth" with cotton swabs between the vertexes of the triangular
"teeth" so that we have created in effect an expanded
triangulated pentagon. Note that the Golden Mean ratio still
holds for the expanded pentagon. But also note that around each
of the edge vertexes or corners of the original triangulated
pentagon we have six equilateral triangles. In other words we
have grown the triangulated pentagon through hexagonal
extension. By iteration of this process you can create giant
triangulated pentagons that are composed of umpteen hexagons
except for one triangulated pentagon which determines the
curvature and defines the process of expansion (see Figure 11).
Similarly if you build an icosahedron using cotton swabs and
take off the top triangulated pentagon, you can extend the
midsection of the icosahedron through hexagonal extension to
create a tubular structure which preserves the pentagonal cross
section of the tube even though the tube is entirely composed of
hexagonal arrays around each vertex except at the two
icosahedral end caps (see Figure 12). Of course you may also
evenly grow an icosahedron through hexagonal extension to nearly
infinite, nearly spherical dimensions (see Figure 13). Similar
structures can be made from triangulated dodecahedra. Notice
the the pentagons determining the curvature of the Radiolarian
skeleton in Figure 14. Though this example is not triangulated
and suffers some deformation, its structural principle is clear.
It is interesting to note that the two most critical
substances necessary for life on Earth are known to
spontaneously form these structures. Buckyballs and Buckytubes
FIGURE 8
THE OCTAHEDRON, TETRAHEDRON AND STRUCTURAL CUBE
IN CLOSEST PACKING OR OCTET TRUSS CONFIGURATION

FIGURE 9
THE FLEXIBLE TRIANGULATED HEXAGON

10
FIGURE 10
THE TRIANGULATED PENTAGON AS THE CAUSE OF
CURVATURE IN SURFACE CONSTRUCTION

11
of carbon have been discussed at great length in 21st Century
magazine and the New Federalist newspaper, but it may not be so
well known that water forms similar structures around foreign
compounds in hydrates (see the table by Irving Klotz in Figure
15).

12
FIGURE 11
EXTENSION OF PENTAGONAL CURVATURE THROUGH
HEXAGONAL EXTENSION

13
FIGURE 11 (continued)

FIGURE 12
TUBULAR HEXAGONAL EXTENSION OF AN ICOSAHEDRON
PRESERVING PENTAGONAL CROSS SECTION

14
FIGURE 12 (continued)

FIGURE 13
EXPANSION OF ICOSAHEDRON THROUGH HEXAGONAL
EXTENSION

15
FIGURE 14
RADIOLARIAN SKELETON
(from Symmetry by Herman Weyl)

Faces 12 14 15 16
Vertices 20 24 26 28
Edges 30 36 39 42
Volume 160 A3 230 A3 260 A3 290 A3
enclosed
Simple polyhedra found in crystalline clathrate hydrates of
Class I and Class II molecules.
FIGURE 15
HYDRATE POLYHEDRA
(from "Polyhedral Clathrate Hydrates" by Irving
Klotz delivered to the Frozen Cell Symposium,
1969)

16
FIGURE 16
VIEWS OF A CRUDE SNAIL SHELL MODEL BUILT USING A
COMBINATION OF PENTAGONAL CURVATURE AND HEXAGONAL
EXTENSION

17
FIGURE 17
CREATION OF THE PENTAGON AND GOLDEN MEAN THROUGH
SIXFOLD CIRCULAR ACTION

FIGURE 18
SIX SPHERES SURROUNDING ONE IN A PLANE

18
FIGURE 19
THE TRIANGULATED PENTAGON—THE MINIMUM, WHOLE
UNIT CONSTRUCTED DEFLECTION FROM THE PLANE

19
 CONCLUSION

Just as the Golden Mean is characteristic of the

astronomical and atomic realms because of their curvature, I
hypothesize that living beings are characterized by surfaces of
many types, sizes, purposes etc., but that it is this geometry
of pentagonal "curvature" determining hexagonal extension of
curved surfaces within living beings which is the reason that
living beings are characterized by Golden Mean ratios.
As examples I have built crude snail shell models using this
principle of pentagonal construction for curvature, and
hexagonal construction for extension (see Figure 16).
Note that the same hexagonal extension which in the
crystalline structures allowed for maximum entropy in four
separate planes outward from a central sphere in closest packed
arrangement, in the case of surfaces preserves the curvature
created by the triangulated pentagon even as it "smoothes" the
curvature to be more spherical.
In Kepler's words: "Of the two regular [Platonic] solids,
the dodecahedron and the icosahedron, the former is made up
precisely of pentagons, the latter of triangles but triangles
that meet five at a point. Both of these solids, and indeed the
structure of the pentagon itself, cannot be formed without the
divine proportion as modern geometers call it." In a sense this
is true, but this approach tends to identify the effect as the
cause and thereby creates unnecessary mystification and
confusion. Of course there are ways to create a pentagon which
ignore its real derivation as a mere projection onto the plane
of a sixfold equal division of circular action on the surface of
a sphere (see Figure 17) or more relevant to this case—a
triangulated pentagon. This also causes mystification.
Let's do one last quick experiment. Take a marble and
surround it with one layer of other marbles on a plane surface.
Exactly and precisely six similar marbles will surround it (see
Figure 18). Remove one marble encircling the center marble.
Now constrict the remaining five encircling marbles until each
is touching the center marble and two other encircling marbles.
What happens? As we did before with cotton swabs we have
deflected our geometry by the minimum whole unit difference from
the plane and have created the maximum "curvature" in
constructive terms (see Figure 19). The Golden Mean or Divine
Proportion in constructed surfaces and in living beings is the
effect—not the cause of this mini-max process.
Of course all of this seems to be so ridiculously simple
that one is tempted to say that it's too simple. Yet every
other treatment of the Golden Mean which I've seen does not
account for the necessity of the Golden Mean as a common
characteristic of living organisms except perhaps in the case of
mollusks. If one starts from the standpoint of taking an
algebraic ratio and then creating "Golden" triangles,

20
rectangles, pentagons or even spirals within the Cartesian
coordinate system, it is possible to make interesting
constructions; however, the central question is left
unanswered. Nature does not go around calculating square roots
or pi. These irrational numbers are the result of our
superimposition over nature of an arbitrary rectilinear
Cartesian coordinate system, or in other words the attempt to
square the circle or to understand the living in terms of the
non-living. The development of supercomputers and partial
differential equations has allowed for the solution to
infinitesimal degrees of accuracy of extremely complex functions
as in computational fluid dynamics; however, this is equivalent
to putting the square pegs in the round holes—it can be done,
but it lacks the simplicity of truth.

21
FIGURE 20
PALLADIUM-DEUTERIUM LOADING CONFIGURATION
In a one to one loading configuration, deuterium
occupies the center of every octahedron within
the closest packed palladium lattice. As this
model demonstrates, the constructed
cubeoctahedron and the structural cube are
inversions of each other in which each vertex of
the cubeoctahedron occupies the center of each
octahedron (complete or partial) within the
constructed cube and conversely each vertex of
the constructed cube occupies the center of each
partial octahedron within the cubeoctahedron.
What you have is palladium in close packed or
octet truss arrangement with respect to each
other palladium atom and deuterium in close
packed or octet truss arrangement with respect to
each other deuteron. It is almost as if the
palladium is a matrix for creating deuterium or
hydrogen metal.
Note that each deuteron-deuteron relationship
crosses each palladium-palladium relationship at
right angles. Is this what allows the Coulomb
repulsion of deuterons to be screened out?
Also note that after this one to one loading
is achieved, the next largest spaces which could
be occupied by deuterons are the interiors of the
tetrahedra within the palladium octet truss. Are

22
these tetrahedra the crucibles of solid state
fusion? As Dr. Takahashi asked, is it possible
to drive two deuterons within the interior of one
of the tetrahedra to facilitate a fusion
reaction?
Or, does the fact that each deuteron is
surrounded equidistantly by twelve other
deuterons facilitate some other coherent wave
phenomenon as in a laser or in Dr. Preparata's
theory of superradiance? By sealing one or more
exterior surfaces of this deuterium lattice, is
it possible to use the entropie character of the
octet truss or lattice in a negentropic way to
concentrate energy or action onto surface
"anvils" to fuse two deuterons?
While the answers to these questions is
unknown, there is little doubt in my mind that
the geometry of both the palladium lattice and
the deuterium lattice are of primary importance.

23