This post comes as I'm reading Zero, which is about the history of the number/concept Zero. Pythagoras and his crew were so into rationality and proportionality, but ironically, the golden mean he championed is irrational. The Greeks never really adopted zero because they couldn't really get their heads around it ("How can nothing be something?" they asked themselves.). Anyway, I think we find such an aesthetic appeal in the Golden Mean and other natural proportions because we ourselves are part of nature. It's so wonderful to find such order in chaos.
