Dossier: Rituals, Sacred Architecture and Geometry
From Vedic altars to Gothic cathedrals, from Renaissance paintings to the orientation toward La Mecque, religious practices have often posed very concrete problems to mathematicians: to build, to align, to measure, to orient, to represent infinity. This dossier explores these places where sacred gesture meets geometric rigor, and shows how rites, architecture and spiritual arts have nurtured some of the most beautiful mathematical ideas.
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Vedic mathematics: a history of ritual geometry and the Śulba Sūtras
Discover how Vedic rituals gave rise to some of the oldest geometric, arithmetic and algorithmic texts in human history.
Gothic cathedral symmetries: the mathematics of the Middle Ages
Discover how Gothic architects mastered symmetry to create geometric masterpieces in cathedrals, with orders of symmetry as high as 8.
The divine perspective: geometry and art in the Renaissance
How did Renaissance painters work around the vanishing point—a profane image of divine infinity—before projective geometry formalized their intuitions?
Determining the qibla: spherical trigonometry and direction to Mecca
Discover how Muslim tradition inspired elegant mathematical solutions for finding the direction of Mecca, combining spherical geometry and astronomy.