The emergence of symmetries in classical physics

Abstract Since antiquity symmetry has proved to be a central guiding idea of research with which the microcosm and macrocosm are to be explained. Euclidean mathematics established a unified theory of proportions of the world in which the spherical symmetries of the macrocosm and the regular (“Platonic”) bodies of the microcosm were distinguished. In the Pythagorean tradition symmetrical proportions were understood as an expression of the beauty and harmony of the cosmos until the Renaissance.