About Me
Archive for November 2014
Hans Jenny - The universe is not unregulated Chaos. It is a dynamic but ordered pattern
The name most associated with Cymatics is that of Swiss born Physician & natural scientist Hans Jenny (pr. yenny). His 1967 book Kymatic volume 1 first popularized the phenomena of -'Cymatics' the phrase coined by Jenny which has become synonymous with wave phenomena and the creation of ethereal looking water-sound images
Born in Basel Switzerland in 1904, Jennys love of nature & music were strong influences from an early age. As a child he was a gifted keyboard player and although a career in music seemed his most likely route he chose instead to become a physician. After completing his doctorate he taught science at the Rudolph Steiner school in Zurich for four years, before setting up his own medical practice in the Swiss village of Dornach.
Jennys naturalistic approach to his work informed his view of Cymatics & sound and their part in the creation of the universe. Jenny was an advocate of the idea that Cymatics described a sound-matrix at work in nature, an invisible driving force that could create everything from the wave-like shape of a mountain range to the stripes on a zebra or the petals on a flower
"The more one studies these things, the more one realizes that sound is the creative
principle. It must be regarded as primordial. No single phenomenal category can be
claimed as the aboriginal principle. We cannot say, in the beginning was numbers
or in the beginning was symmetry, etc..... They are not themselves
the creative power. This power is inherent in tone, in sound." - Hans Jenny
Ernst Chladni - Finding a connexion between vibration and physical reality
Is there a connection between sound, vibration and physical reality? Many inquisitive people have searched for a way to demonstrate this premise. Even before the introduction of quantum physics individuals have sought to make waves in "seemingly solid" material visible.
In 1787, the German musician and physicist Ernst Chladni published - 'Discovery of the Theory of Pitch, making it one of the first treatises on the science of sound. In this and other works, he laid the foundation for that discipline within physics that came to be called acoustics. He is sometimes referred to as the "father of acoustics".
Chladni observed that when a metal plate covered with sand or other similar substance was made to vibrate by running a violin bow across it perpendicularly, a pattern emerged in the sand. Through careful documentation he theorized that sound affects physical matter and that these changes can be repeated. He produced diagrams of his experiments which came to be called, "Chladni figures." He went on the lecture circuit in Europe and demonstrated his finding to live audiences, which included a command performance for Napoleon. Chladni so delighted Napoleon he offered him 6000 francs for his performance. Napoleon then offered 3000 francs to anyone who could explain this phenomenon. This prize was awarded to Sophie Germain in 1816.
One of Chladni's other proposed theories included that meteorites were extraterrestrial, and in 1794 he wrote a book on the subject. Previously they were considered to be of volcanic origins.
Chladni invented a musical instrument called the 'Euphonium' made of glass rods and steel bars that were sounded by being rubbed with the moistened finger, and traveled about Europe performing on this instrument and giving scientific lectures.
The Voynich manuscript - The most mysterious book of the modern age
The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum in the book pages has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance.The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912.
The pages of the codex are vellum. Some of the pages are missing, but about 240 remain. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams.
The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. No one has yet succeeded in deciphering the text, and it has become a famous case in the history of cryptography. The mystery of the meaning and origin of the manuscript has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript the subject of novels and speculation. None of the many hypotheses proposed over the last hundred years has yet been independently verified. Many people have speculated that the writing might be nonsense, or proto-asemic writing.
The Voynich manuscript was donated by Hans P. Kraus to Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Libraryin 1969, where it is catalogued under call number MS 408.
Here is the complete manuscript scan made by Yale University : Voynich manuscript
