It's confusing, if you assume that our preferences are totally arbitrary. If 'liking the golden ratio' is a property of being human, it's profound, but not confusing.
Thing is that the ideal might not be the golden ratio. Maybe we prefer pi/2 instead of (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2. Who's to say? Pi/2 is if anything -more- fundamental. It seems to be that we don't like things to look too square or too oblong, which limits us to the range of 4:3 through 7:3 as 'aesthetically acceptible'. phi just happens to be in the middle of this. So is pi/2, as noted previously.
You could test this, by showing people some rectangles and asking which ones they like -- 1.4:1, 1.5:1, 1.6:1, 1.7:1, 1.8:1, 1.9:1, etc.
One thing that's interesting is the rise of 8:5 screen dimensions over the old styles of 4:3 and 16:9. 8:5 is, coincidentally, right next to phi, and is in fact a convergent of its continued fraction. 8:5 includes 1280x800, 1440x900, and 1680x1050, 4:3 includes 640x480 and 1024x768, and 16:9 includes the oddball 1366x768. It could just be that the math is easier with 8 and 5, though, since their reciprocals both terminate.
Actually for typical (cheap), large consumer displays 16:9 seems to be taking over. It's increasingly hard to find 16:10 24"+ monitors that aren't >$600. I'm not sure whether this is due to demand, the economics of larger displays, or the rise of HD television (720p, 1080p are both 16:9).
If (!!) our ratio preferences are arbitrary, it still seems like general population's preference would coalesce to some ratio.
For example, being right or left handed doesn't seem to have any particular advantage, as long as your handedness is the same as everyone else. It seems like humans have arbitrarily "chosen" right-handedness. :)
Comments
It's confusing, if you assume that our preferences are totally arbitrary. If 'liking the golden ratio' is a property of being human, it's profound, but not confusing.
Thing is that the ideal might not be the golden ratio. Maybe we prefer pi/2 instead of (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2. Who's to say? Pi/2 is if anything -more- fundamental. It seems to be that we don't like things to look too square or too oblong, which limits us to the range of 4:3 through 7:3 as 'aesthetically acceptible'. phi just happens to be in the middle of this. So is pi/2, as noted previously.
You could test this, by showing people some rectangles and asking which ones they like -- 1.4:1, 1.5:1, 1.6:1, 1.7:1, 1.8:1, 1.9:1, etc.
One thing that's interesting is the rise of 8:5 screen dimensions over the old styles of 4:3 and 16:9. 8:5 is, coincidentally, right next to phi, and is in fact a convergent of its continued fraction. 8:5 includes 1280x800, 1440x900, and 1680x1050, 4:3 includes 640x480 and 1024x768, and 16:9 includes the oddball 1366x768. It could just be that the math is easier with 8 and 5, though, since their reciprocals both terminate.
Actually for typical (cheap), large consumer displays 16:9 seems to be taking over. It's increasingly hard to find 16:10 24"+ monitors that aren't >$600. I'm not sure whether this is due to demand, the economics of larger displays, or the rise of HD television (720p, 1080p are both 16:9).
HD televisions. They reuse the same LCD panels in monitors and HDTVs.
If (!!) our ratio preferences are arbitrary, it still seems like general population's preference would coalesce to some ratio.
For example, being right or left handed doesn't seem to have any particular advantage, as long as your handedness is the same as everyone else. It seems like humans have arbitrarily "chosen" right-handedness. :)