The Pantheon: Classical Mathematical Order As Beauty and Truth

One way to understand the profound effect Greco-Roman culture had on the Renaissance on Enlightenment is to consider how people of this era saw the Roman Pantheon.  They were impressed by the facts that:

1) The ancients had been able to use math to create such an architectural, engineering marvel; they realized that around the time of the birth of Christ, the Romans (via the Greeks) had a greater understanding of -- and ability to apply -- geometry.  Built in roughly 125 AD, no one would be able to build a dome of this size until the middle of the 1700s.

2) The Pantheon's engineering genius mirrors its aesthetic brilliance; people also saw in the Pantheon the Neo-Classical Enlightenment concept that mathematical order (geometry) was beautiful, and that this order represented the divine order of the universe.  In other words, the same mathematical principles that make the enormous dome physically possible also make it aesthetically perfect; this was seen as evidence that man could apply math toward human creation to produce the type of perfection God created.

3) Thus: God's universe was mathematical, and man could use math not only to understand God's order, but to harness that order, in all kinds of ways.

We see Enlightenment Europeans applying this philosophy:

a) in the music of Bach (1685-1750) and Vivaldi (1678 -- 1741): religious and secular music shaped through mathematical order

b) emulating this and other Greco-Roman architecture, to symbolize law and governance as rational order (vs. divine provenance). Monticello

c) most importantly, the belief that logical, rational thought can create a beautiful society.