The Circle and the Line: Part 1

The reason the idea is called "Looping Spectrum" is because it seems everything in the Observable Universe can be reduced to pattern made from circles and the lines. (The circle is the loop and the line is the spectrum.)

The first thing to examine is geometry, with the goal being to find the most fundamental shape. If you associate numbers with shapes and consider shapes with fewer sides to be more fundamental than those with many sides, then squares would be more fundamental than pentagons, and triangles would be more fundamental than squares. In fact, triangles are the most fundamental polygon because all other polygons are actually just a bunch of triangles stuck together.

So triangles are the most basic polygon, but they are associated with three, so to get more basic than that we have to figure out what to associate with two, one, and zero. It seems obvious that the line segment would be associated with two because it has two points to define it, plus line segments are fundamental building blocks of all polygons. So that leaves us with an odd question: what shapes are associated with one and zero? We could also try working backwards and ask what number do we associate with the circle? This ends up being a paradoxical question because depending on your perspective, circles could be associated with both one, zero, and even infinity! The most intuitive answer is probably to associate one with a single point, and infinity with the circle, because circles have infinite points in their perimeters, and if a polygon had infinite sides it would look like a circle. There is a connection between circles and points (and one and infinity) that I discuss more in this essay, but for now it is enough to say that all polygons exist in a spectrum between the single point, and the circle: 

Another approach is to say all shapes are made of either straight lines (polygons) or curved lines, and this is where organic shapes come in:

and also shapes like the ellipse and oval:

However, if the goal is to find the most basic curved shape, it makes sense to go with the one that only has one point inside it, and is also perfectly balanced. This, of course, is the circle:

So the circle is the most basic curved shape, and lines are the building blocks of all non-curved shapes. The circle and the line lead us right back to color, where the line is associated with the color spectrum, and the circle is the color wheel:

If you already read Color Theory: Part 1 then you know that color can mix in two different ways, one for waves and one for particles, and you also know that magenta is an oddball color for being able to connect the opposite ends of the line to turn it into a circle. (This turns the spectrum into a loop.) There is a lot more that can be said about color, but for now it will suffice to just point out that color can be used as a metaphor for anything with a spectrum, especially something with different energy levels. Using the spectrum as a line and the wheel as a circle gives us a way to use geometry to visualize something abstract like energy.

The final example I will give of how things in the Universe break down into the circle and the line is the physics of motion. In physics, motion can be classified as linear or circular. This basically means things either move in a straight line or they rotate around a point. (There is also oscillatory motion, which is motion back and forth along a line across a central point, but that is like a combination of linear and circular motion which I explain further in this essay.) Even thoughts can be considered to "move" like this, with logical linear thought moving along a straight path, and creative circular thought that is "outside the box."

There are more examples of this dynamic between curved lines and straight lines but I am trying to keep things simplified and generalized for this essay. In part 2 I will get into some more specific examples using the circle and the line, especially concerning the ratio between the two: Pi.