Title: The Golden Section

Abstract: For more than 150 years (and possibly much longer), it has been believed by some people that a particular irrational number -- the "golden section" or "golden ratio" -- is the mathematical principle underlying visual beauty. Empirical findings on the question have been mixed. Starting in the late 1980s, however, mathematicians Roger Herz-Fischler and David Fowler put forward a compelling mathematical argument suggesting that even empirical findings supporting the golden section are actually artifacts of the computations involved in such research. In my talk, I unpack that mathematical argument and show that this implication, apparently devastating to the very possibility of empirical research into the golden section, is itself an artifact of an unreasonable assumption that was made by Herz-Fischler and Fowler.