What Have We Known about Number Five

What Have We Known about Number Five

Geometry

The Pythagoreans discovered the five regular solids
(tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron)

Name	Picture	Faces	Edges	Vertices	Edges per face	Faces meeting at each vertex	Vertex configuration	Symmetry group
tetrahedron	(Animation)	4	6	4	3	3	3.3.3	T_d
cube (hexahedron)	(Animation)	6	12	8	4	3	4.4.4	O_h
octahedron	(Animation)	8	12	6	3	4	3.3.3.3	O_h
dodecahedron	(Animation)	12	30	20	5	3	5.5.5	I_h
icosahedron	(Animation)	20	30	12	3	5	3.3.3.3.3	I_h

Botany

Many flowers have 5 petals

Zoology

Most starfishes have 5 rays, or arms

Anatomy

Human beengs have 5 fingers on each hand and 5 toes on each foot

This figure medieval scholars considered a microcosm symbol .

Each line of a pentagram is divided into 3 smaller segments, and if you divide the length of the longer segment with the shorter segment of any pair of segments you will get 1.618033989... that is a golden ratio, also known as the golden proportion, golden mean, golden section, golden number, divine proportion or sectio divina

Astronomy

When viewed from Earth, the successive conjunctions of Venus plot the points of a pentagram around the Sun every eight years, returning to its starting point after a forty year cycle.

5 is a sum of the first even and odd numbers (2 + 3). (To the Pythagoreans 1 was not a number and was not odd.) It therefore symbolizes human life and—in the Platonic and Pythagorean traditions—marriage, as the sum of the female 2 and the male 3.

In the Jewish kabbalistic tradition, the pentagram represents the five upper sephiroth on the Tree of Life- five numbers, being indivisible by any but themselves, which represent pure archetypal forces: justice, mercy, wisdom, understanding, and transcendent splendor.