golden mean

Related to golden mean: Golden rectangle

golden mean

1. mathematics A division in a line such that the proportion of the whole to the larger area is equal to the proportion of the larger area to the smaller one. The mathematical golden mean has been employed in all manner of things, not the least in art, architecture, and even philosophy.
2. A general rule of moderation, avoiding both extreme excess and extreme deficiency. Some people will argue ardently against ever consuming alcohol, but to me, as long as you follow the golden mean, you'll be just fine. There are pros and cons to both approaches, so why don't we aim for a golden mean that incorporates elements of both?
See also: golden, mean
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

the golden mean

the avoidance of extremes.
This phrase translates the Latin phrase aurea mediocritas , which comes from the Roman poet Horace's Odes.
See also: golden, mean
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

the happy/golden ˈmean

(approving) a course of action that is not extreme: To be honest, I don’t like either of the proposals. What we really need is a golden mean between the two.
See also: golden, happy, mean
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • the golden mean
  • the happy/golden mean
  • the golden section
  • section
  • golden ratio
  • golden section
  • stake out
  • stake someone/something out
  • keep within
  • keep within (something or some place)
References in periodicals archive
According to the interpretation of many predecessors' viewpoints of "The mean principle", after expanding and developing these viewpoints, Confucius created "The Golden Mean".
He combined his love of math and art in his enthusiastic advocating of "the Golden Mean.'' Born in Middletown, Conn., Mr.
I know so much more about what the spiral means, the Golden Mean and Fibonacci: how it appears in all forms of life from the micro to the macro.
'The English', he noted, 'are more sumptuous than the Persians because, despising the golden mean they affect all extremities ...
Liberals' rhetorical appeal to "moderation" evokes echoes of the "golden mean" in the minds of political philosophers and people over the age of 50 who know or remember their Aristotle, whose name and writings still carry a kind of social-intellectual cachet even for postmodern liberals, whether they have actually read him or not.
Referring to IIMC, Tewari said that while the Government was in the process of finalizing a proposal to grant the status of "Institute of National Importance" to IIMC with Degree granting powers, IIMC had to strive to become "the Golden Mean for Journalism and Journalistic Training".
In part two he goes back to the Axial Age, and reads Aristotle on the golden mean in light of Confucius' own "ethics of mean." He further compares St.
" The entire effort is to try and find a golden mean between Article 19 ( of the Constitution), the caveat to Article 19 and how the entire process will work.
Lin frequently pairs unlikely objects, as in the unsettling melding of synthetic bones and domestic tools in "More or Less the Same" (2011) or in her recent foray into the two-dimensional surface, "The Golden Mean" (2012).
First, it should be pointed out that the paper in question, "The Golden Mean in Mining: Talking Points" (downloadable at www.jjcicsi.org.), was NOT issued by Ateneo de Manila.
After my earlier (positive) experience, I decided to give it a go, and agreed to present a seven-week series entitled "The Joy of Mathematics" covering the nature of mathematics, and an introduction to number, calculation, measurement, geometry, statistics and Fibonacci & the Golden Mean. About forty people attended the first session in which I explored with them the features of mathematics as a language, as a way to solve problems, as a way of thinking and so on.
Alternatively, there is a passage in the Symposium, which Kennedy cites in relation to the Golden Mean with a difference of 0.8%, 1.6% by symmetry, 17.6% of a work at 11 points and 36.8% at 23 points.
Having been brought up on Aristotle's ethical "Golden Mean" (In medio stat virtus/Virtue lies in the middle), I not only agree, but I insist!
In quasicrystals, for instance, the ratio of various distances between atoms is related to the golden mean.
The Montreal-born Dorothea Rockburne remembers Saturday children's classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where she learned classical disciplines--tempera, watercolor, oil, buon fresco, and figure drawing--and where she first discovered how the Golden Mean generates the mystery of infinity.1 What later followed--the folding, rolling and layering; the club-sandwiching of Euclidean geometry with contemporary topology, cosmology, and astronomy, were, for Rockburne, reinventions of those ancient processes, updated in her personal quest to find within nature's hidden order a modernist's route through the unknown.