"Like many claims in the cymatics community, the hypothesis that the carvings represent Chladni patterns is not supported by scientific or historical evidence.[citation needed] One of the problems is that many of the 'box' carvings are not original, having been replaced in the 19th century following damage by erosion."
Citation needed indeed, but there's no academic research about this extravagant theory anyways, and with my foray into the subject, I just found the patterns to be decorative geometric shapes with a coincidental resemblance to Chladni patterns.
I know it's debated, but it wouldn't be the first time humanity rediscovered forgotten knowledge! What intrigues me about it is it still lines up with Occams Razor and the KISS principle, if mystics and academics of the day wanted to encode secret knowledge this would fit the bill perfectly at the time the original chapel was built.
I haven't looked I to the actual history as much, I ran across Rosslyn reading about art history and cathedral architecture and I spent a lot more time reading about Chladni patterns than I ever did about Rosslyn itself. Thought the link would be interesting in light of the original article.
Now what I am wondering is the shapes of these patterns on non-square and non-circular plates. I haven't seen many exotically shaped plates so it leads me to wonder if the patterns don't show up as well on other shapes. I'm curious from a visual perspective what 'patterns' occur in nature like some people obsess about relationships between made-up numbers ;)
"Like many claims in the cymatics community, the hypothesis that the carvings represent Chladni patterns is not supported by scientific or historical evidence.[citation needed] One of the problems is that many of the 'box' carvings are not original, having been replaced in the 19th century following damage by erosion."
Citation needed indeed, but there's no academic research about this extravagant theory anyways, and with my foray into the subject, I just found the patterns to be decorative geometric shapes with a coincidental resemblance to Chladni patterns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics