From proportion to balance: the background to symmetry in science Giora Hon a , Bernard R. Goldstein b a Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel b Departments of Religious Studies and History & Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Received 17 February 2004; received in revised form 13 June 2004 Abstract We call attention to the historical fact that the meaning of symmetry in antiquity—as it appears in VitruviusÕs De architectura—is entirely different from the modern concept. This leads us to the question, what is the evidence for the changes in the meaning of the term sym- metry, and what were the different meanings attached to it? We show that the meaning of the term in an aesthetic sense gradually shifted in the context of architecture before the image of the balance was attached to the term in the middle of the 18th century and well before the first modern scientific usage by Legendre in 1794. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Symmetry; Vitruvius; Claude Perrault; Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu; Balance in architecture. 0039-3681/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2004.12.001 E-mail addresses: hon@research.haifa.ac.il (G. Hon); brg@pitt.edu (B.R. Goldstein). Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 1–21 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa