“Sophea” and “Sophy”, given names of Cambodian women, are probably the most unique, beautiful, and meaningful name of people across the continent. “Sophia” and “Sophie” are also given names of women in Europe. In Khmer language, Sophea also refers to “beautiful thing or person.” While in ancient Greek, philo-sophia, later philosophy, means “love of knowlege”. Also, PHI, part of Sophia, means a lot more in art history. 1.618 ‘one-point-six-one-eight’ is the number PHI. Although in Khmer name, there is no completed form of PHI, I believe it is a matter of spelling.
In The Da Vinci Code, the Number One New York Times Bestseller, Harvard symbol expert Robert Langdon recalled his lecturing:
“Despite PHI’s seemingly mystical mathematical origin, the truely mind-boggling aspect of PHI was its role as a fundamental building block in nature. Plants, animals, and even human beings all possessed dimensional properties that adhered with eerie exactitude to the ratio of PHI to 1.”
“Measure the distance from your shoulder to your fingertips, and then divide it by the distance from your elbow to your fingertips.”
I bought The Da Vinci Code in November, and began reading it in mid-December last year. I have not learnt about European history much yet, but I am very keen to get to know more. I find the novel very fascinating. Like many other readers who have read this book, I find it thrilled and want to finish it as soon as I can, one day if possible. But, actually, I took most of my lunch break and evening for nearly three weeks to complete reading it. The story captures the scene of two beautiful cities in western Europe, Paris and London. The Priory of Sion, a European secret society and history of Christianity and so the Vatican are very new to me. In the novel, from one plot to another, cryptographer Sophie Neveu and symbologist Robert Langdon, two main characters of the story, have to work together to break a series of double-code designed intelligently by Jacques Sauniere. I have never wrote a book review, hence, rather writing a complete one of this favorite book, I point out only one remarkable piece that I thought very interesting.