Reflections on the Lambda Triangle

Abstract

Kappraff described the panels in the pavement of the Reading Room of the Library on the second floor of the San Lorenzo church complex in Florence. Work on the library was begun in 1523 by Pope Clement VII, Giulio di Medici, as a monument to his uncle, Lorenzo di Medici. The library was one of the few successes of Clement's disastrous reign, characterized as it was by bad political decisions. In the Timaeus panel of the library, Michelangelo, the designer of the library, used the number relations (the scale) of the lambda figure which had previously been used as the musical system studied by Pythagoras. Kappraff used the 'lambda triangle' in Table 1 'found in Plato's 'Timaeus' and referred to there as the World Soul'. Strictly speaking, the lambda diagram displayed in Table 1 is that given in Taylor but with the empty space between the two slanting lines / (hence the designation 'lambda') filled in a methodical and obvious way. Plato himself does not appear to have used the lambda figure as such though he used the two generating scales 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27 shown by the slanting lines to describe the creation by the Demiurge of the World Soul. These scales are represented linearly (essentially in one line) in the commentary on the 'Timaeus'.