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Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

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...Synergetics is the clearest, most comprehensive attempt to explain the universe, and universal phenomena, that I have ever read. It is one man's attempt to link the language of science to the common layman.
Fuller defines synergy as follows "behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately." (Synergetics, p. 3)
Fuller suggests that breaking down a subject and studying its parts separately, as is done in science today, can never lead to a comprehensive understanding of the whole. He writes "nature has only one department and one language." (Synergetics II, p 234). Fuller on PI: "To how many places does nature carry out PI when she makes each successive bubble in the white-cresting surf of each successive wave before nature finds out that PI can never be resolved?... And at what moment in the making of each separate bubble in Universe does nature decide to terminate her eternally frustrated calculating and instead turn out a fake sphere? I answered myself that I don't think nature is using PI or any of the irrational fraction constants of physics." (Synergetics II, p. 233).
Fuller explains the universe through geometry. Geometry is the study of structure, and the relationship between objects (and points of perception) within space. The topics covered range from numerology to architecture to the nature and structure of the universe itself. Fuller explains scientific concepts in terms that anyone can understand. His insights are often astonishing.
Fuiller understands the universe throught the geometric form called the tetrahedron. The tetrahedron, according to Fuller, is the basis for all structure in existence, and he has built a system of thought, and a geometry, consistent throughout, from the ground up, explaining everything from atomic structure to galaxies. Fuller uses the tetrahedron as the basis to construct his tenegrity structures, the geodesic dome, and the octet truss, among others, which are used in industrial and residential applications. Fuller was a genius, but not an esoteric one. All of his theories have practical applications.
This is not an easy book to read, as Fuller's language is dry and precise. But the book is filled with diagrams and charts that flesh out the text. This is a massive work, a work of a true genius.
Anyone who is interested in "how things work" should not fail to read this book . There is no math (other than arithmetic) necessary to understand everything in the book. Only an inquiring mind that is open to new ideas.

Few people know that Buckminster Fuller had a transforming experience when he was about 35 years old. This event dissuaded him from committing suicide, and launched him on his remarkable career. From that point on Fuller decided to "think for himself," and no longer was subject to the assumptions of science, religion and philosophy. For that reason, he is an American original. This particular book is not light fare for the layperson, and it is much less accessible than his "Operating Manual for Planet Earth." Even so, there is much to fascinate. For example, his diagram on page five demonstrates the principle of synergy in the most vivid way, showing how to make two triangles into four by thinking in three dimensions, rather than two. Coleridge defined science as a "search for beauty," and that may be the best way to describe "Synergetics." Fuller admonishes us, "Dare to be naïve." Indeed, this scientist, philosopher, religionist transcends the typical straight jacket of classic disciplines and offers a remarkable search for truth, beauty, and even goodness.

"Synergetics" was the summation of Fuller's philosophy; the foundation underlaying his other, practical works. As such, the book contains little in the way of immediately applicable information, such as how to design a car, a building, or a society. Fuller instead concentrates on the abstract quality of structure, based on the tetrahedron, the simplest possible three-dimensional form. He takes nothing for granted: properties of objects are not assumed to automatically exist unless they are explicitly stated. Fuller has great contempt for the cube, an inefficient structure that is unstable without redundant triangulation to support it. His reverence for the tetrahedron, however, obscures the fact that on the human scale, cubes are far more efficient in containing space, the ultimate function of any structure. Cubes are stackable without wasted space or material. This is the reason why houses, boxes and other containers are based on the cube, in many different cultures, while tetrahedron-based structures are limited to geodesic domes and camping tents.

In recent years, "tensegrity" structures have become more common, primarily as sculpture. These are composed of rods that do not touch each other, but are held in place by a continuous lattice of wires. Fuller explains that the rods themselves could be composed of "tensegrity masts," that is, smaller rod-and-cable structures that duplicate solid rods in shape and function. The rods in these masts could themselves be composed of yet smaller tensegrity masts, and so on until we arrive at the atom. The problem here is that going the other direction, to larger ("practical") scale, even the most efficient tensegrity structure must eventually rest, as we all do, on the redundant, wasteful, solid ground. This is why, with the exception of the bicycle wheel, they are relegated to artwork rather than industry.

"Synergetics" contains much more; reminiscence on the author's childhood, a free-verse poem on numbers and linguistic affinities between Polynesians, Zulus, and Vikings, and many beautiful and clear diagrams. The book is written throughout in a highly unusual, but eminently readable language that once experienced, is immediately recognizable as Fuller's unique voice. "Synergetics" and its supplemental volume are vital to an understanding of the author, one of the great visionaries of the 20th Century, and possibly the last Renaissance Man.

The most comprehensive system to understanding the physical world, from kindergarteners who are able to understand nuclear level inter-transformations, to adults who barely know what happens to a sphere when it's bounced on the ground; this book will enlighten you to some new inter/outer working combination you never thought of EVERY time you open it. I suggest a light pass, a medium pass, and a heavy pass in that order, just to shock you as to the amount of substance this book has, you will not walk away the same.

Bucky Fuller's Synergetics is like nothing I have ever read. In fact, it is so dense and challenging that I couldn't handle it when I bought it over thirty years ago. But now, armed with a pencil for sketching my interpretations of some of Fuller's more obscure formulations, a highlighter for some of his key declarations, and the patience I lacked previously, the past several months have yielded some remarkable insights into a vision of the universe (or "Universe," as Fuller conjures it) that is quite unique and subtle. Not bashful to conflate physics and metaphysics, the author extends his vision of a world based on an equilateral tetrahedron unit to every known experience. I am unaware of a comparable attempt.

To say that Synergetics is not for everyone is to do it an injustice, but frankly, I have never spoken to another who has read it thoroughly. My personal decision to ponder the nature of gravity led me rewardingly back to this book, and though it remains patently unsolved, the new tools I gained will, I expect, be useful. Indeed, Fuller argues that Universe is tensile in its basic tendency, and compression is merely a localized phenomenon that actually results in tension (to give the reader a quick mental picture, imagine a short column of putty that is compressed: its midsection reacts to axial compression by widening against the tension that would maintain its cross section). As for gravity, it is the direct-acting, non wave-like tension that pervades Universe. The planets revolve around themselves and their center of mass due to their inherent motion being pitted against gravity's tension. Fuller does not give short shrift to waves, just the same. In fact, all motion within Universe is wave-shaped, and of course this is consistent with modern physics' findings, but Fuller rejects the wave/particle duality (which is itself, troubling for most) in favor of an event-filled (versus a particle-filled) Universe, where waves are information carriers and events are coordinates. (I hope I have done this concept justice, however rough.)

Fuller avers that our Cartesian coordinate system of x-y-z axes errs in that it predicts infinite, cube-based, open ended conditions in Universe. Fuller's basic unit is the tetrahedron, which is finitely bounded in its vertices (the vertexes, as he calls them, are the actual events). Einstein imagined space that is curved, precisely because of gravity, which causes it to be a closed system. In a similar fashion, Fuller's Universe, however vast, is finite, and to me, agreeably so, because it is (as he says) constructed of finite things. He would not, as I would not, admit to parallel Universes, something conjecturally bemusing to astrophysicists, but philosophically the mere result of inadequate initial description of Universe.

The geodesic dome, the octet truss (used so often nowadays for long spans) and most familiar soccer ball patterns are based upon the conceptual designs of, or directly designed by R. Buckminster Fuller. The principles around which they each have been formulated are via the intersections of great-circles (in other words, circles on a sphere's surface which have centers identical to the spherical center) and relate to tetrahedral spatial enclosures that have three vertices on the spherical surface and one at the spherical center. Radiation, Fuller avers, occurs along curved great circle paths and gravity occurs on chords of these great circles, in other words, in the shortest possible route. Tetrahedra in Universe are derived by connecting the centers of closely-packed spheres, which naturally favor certain repeatable patterns: Tetrahedra, Octohedra, Dodecahedra and some subsets thereof.

You can see why you'd have to sketch a few things to envision the concepts described, although there are many figures in the book, some in the original hand of Fuller, others subsequently rendered. But again, Fuller doesn't stop with diagrams, he invents words and constructs sentences that are often so overwhelmingly complex that their mere consideration requires mental juggling of a high skill. Here is a quote (the entire text of Synergetics is online at [...] ):

Since the minimum system consists of two types of tetrahedra, one symmetrical (or regular) and the other asymmetrical (or irregular); and since also the asymmetrical have greater enveloping strength per units of contained event phenomena, we will differentiate the two minimum-system types by speaking of the simplest, or minimum, single symmetrical system as the mini-symmetric system; and we will refer to the minimum asymmetric system as the mini-asymmetric system. And since the mini- symmetric system is the regular tetrahedron, which cannot be compounded face-to-face with other unit-edged symmetric tetrahedra to fill allspace, but, in order to fill allspace, must be compounded with the tetrahedron's complementary symmetrical system, the octahedron, which is not a minimum system and has twice the volume-to-surface ratio of the tetrahedron of equal edge vector dimension; and since, on the other hand, two special- case minimum asymmetric tetrahedra, the A Quanta Modules and the B Quanta Modules (see Sec. 920.00), have equal volume and may be face-compounded with one another to fill allspace, and are uniquely the highest common volumetric multiple of allspace-filling; and since the single asymmetrical tetrahedron formed by compounding two symmetrical tetrahedral A Modules and one asymmetrical tetrahedral B Module will compound with multiples of itself to fill all positive space, and may be turned inside out to form its noncongruent negative complement (which may also be compounded with multiples of itself to fill all negative space), this three-module, minimum asymmetric (irregular) tetrahedral system, which accommodates both positive or negative space and whose volume is exactly 1/8 that of the regular tetrahedron; and exactly 1/32 the volume of the regular octahedron; and exactly 1/160 the volume of the regular vector equilibrium of zero frequency; and exactly 1/1280 the volume of the vector equilibrium of the initial of all frequencies, the integer 2, which is to say that, expressed in the omnirational terms of the highest common multiple allspace-filling geometry's A or B Modules, the minimum realizable nuclear equilibrium of closest-packing symmetry of unit radius spheres packed around one sphere__which is the vector equilibrium (see Sec. 413.00) __consists of 1,280 A or B Modules, and 1,280 = 28× 5.

That's all one sentence, and for those of us who were taught sentence diagramming, to accurately diagram it would probably qualify one for a lifetime achievement award of some type. I found it difficult to read more than 30 or so pages without rest. Nonetheless, a diligent reader will eventually be rewarded for his forbearing exertions.

It is challenging to faithfully relate in a few paragraphs the scope of Synergetics (which includes an unconvincing -to me, anyway--attempt to relate the periodicity of elements and their valence electron levels to tetrahedral concepts), but to his credit, Buckminster Fuller's approach is professorial, introducing broad concepts early, then returning to the more difficult points repeatedly and one would have to say, patiently, with differing examples to illuminate different mindsets. Analogously, I have noticed that the often befuddling game of golf, filled as it seems to be with advice, instructions, admonitions and nostrums, presents the occasional moment where something previously elusive, suddenly makes sense. Synergetics' approach to concepts undoubtedly will in a similar fashion, reserve some unexpected light for a later insight about Universe, I imagine. Meanwhile, we'll continue to play this game of `being' "...Trying to knock a tiny ball into an even smaller hole with implements ill suited to the purpose," in the words of Winston Churchill. No one ever played a perfect game of golf, and neither will we likely gain a perfect understanding of Universe. But the implements that Synergetics can put into one's teleological carry-bag might prove useful in efforts to play out of some lies.

"Synergetics" is, like so much of Fuller's theoretical work, a cloud of smoke and mirrors that, when examined closely, has little or no substance. This is not my opinion alone; Donald Coxeter, the great 20th century geometer to whom Fuller dedicated the book, called it "nonsense". It's full of charming notions about the primacy of triangles and tetrahedrons, and Fuller's opinions that these are the fundamental building blocks of the Universe.

Of course, Fuller knew nothing of biology, or cosmology, or particle physics, and his meditations came from his imagination alone- not a very fertile source of useful ideas. The reader might well object to that last assertion, but in truth, while Fuller was very good at exploting and promoting the ideas of others, his original ideas, like his underengineered and unstable Dymaxion car, were great failures. His notions of cooperation in progress ran counter to understanding of evolution. The Dome? Invented in 1919 by Walter Bauersfeld for Zeiss, to house their first plantearium. Tensegrity structures? Invented- or perhaps, re-invented (and patented), by Kenneth Snelson, and appropriated by Fuller.

Fuller is perhaps best remembered as a tireless promoter and developer, one who could recognize a good idea, and develop and market it to others. He himself summed up his real accomplishments best, in a (perhaps) overly revealing quote: "Ideas are easy to come by; reduction to practice is an arduous but inspirationally rewarding matter."

I am, by trade, a contemporary philosopher, with strong interests in the works of the Ancient Greeks, esp. Pythagoras, and of course, the great architect, Plato. Generally speaking, I would not persue the kind of book: huge, statements and claims made without supporting arguments, huge gaps in logical presentation, and leaps into areas such as numerology. Bucky reminds me of a cross between Pythagoras (incl. his mysticism) and DaVinci. I am in the early stages of the work, so all I will say at this time is grab a copy and start the journey.