Mathematics and music: The architecture of nature

Abstract

The link between mathematics and music has ancient origins and, over the centuries, it has been adding more and more new content. Mathematics and music are two languages apparently very different but in reality they are the two universal languages: numbers and notes are used worldwide as a global language. In this work we see how math and music provide the keys for understanding the wonderful book of Nature. We discuss in particular the "design of the cosmos" as proposed by Kepler in the Harmonice mundi: the German astronomer's survey on the architecture of the cosmos is based, in fact, on geometry, with reference to static aspects, and on music, with reference to kinematics. This theoretical framework represents not only the link between the astronomical revolution and the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, but also the central point for the definition of the Newton's law of universal gravitation. © 2010 WIT Press.