From proportion to balance: the background to symmetry in science

We call attention to the historical fact that the meaning of symmetry in antiquity-as it appears in Vitruvius's De architectura-is entirely different from the modern concept. This leads us to the question, what is the evidence for the changes in the meaning of the term symmetry, and what were the different meanings attached to it? We show that the meaning of the term in an aesthetic sense gradually shifted in the context of architecture before the image of the balance was attached to the term in the middle of the 18th century and well before the first modern scientific usage by Legendre in 1794.