Blog All the Foxeared Pages: Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics

Online notebook for the readthrough of Synergetics, an online version of which may be found at:
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
I am reading the 1982 version of the 1975 text from MacMillan.

141.00 There is a corollary of synergy known as the Principle of the Whole System, which states that the known behaviors of the whole plus the known behaviors of some of the parts may make possible discovery of the presence of other parts and their behaviors, kinetics, structures, and relative dimensionalities.

152.00 Synergetics is the exploratory strategy of starting with the whole and the known behavior of some of its parts and the progressive discovery of the integral unknowns and their progressive comprehension of the hierarchy of generalized principles.

153.00 Universe apparently is omnisynergetic. No single part of experience will ever be able to explain the behavior of the whole. The more experience one has, the more opportunity there is to discover the synergetic effects, such as to be able to discern a generalized principle, for instance. Then discovery of a plurality of generalized principles permits the discovery of the synergetic effects of their complex interactions. The synergetic metaphysical effect produced by the interaction of the known family of generalized principles is probably what is spoken of as wisdom.

162.00 There are eternal generalizations that embrace a plurality of generalizations. The most comprehensive generalization would be that which has U = MP, standing for an eternally regenerative Universe of M times P, where M stands for the metaphysical and P stands for the physical. We could then have a subgeneralization where the physical P = E^r· E^m, where E^r stands for energy as radiation and E^m stands for energy as matter. There are thus orders of generalization in which the lower orders are progressively embraced by the higher orders. There are several hundred first-order generalizations already discovered and equatingly formalized by scientist-artists. There are very few of the higher order generalizations. Because generalizations must hold true without exception, these generalizations must be inherently eternal. Though special-case experiences exemplify employment of eternal principles, those special cases are all inherently terminal; that is, in temporary employment of the principles.

229.02 The notion that commencing the exploration of the unknown with unity as one (such as Darwin's single cell) will provide simple and reliable arithmetical compounding (such as Darwin's theory of evolution: going from simplecomplex; amoebamonkeyman) is an illusion that as yet pervades and debilitates elementary education.

229.06 Universe is the aggregate of eternal generalized principles whose nonunitarily conceptual scenario is unfoldingly manifest in a variety of special cases in local time-space transformative evolutionary events. Humans are each a special-case unfoldment integrity of the complex aggregate of abstract weightless omni- interaccommodative maximally synergetic non-sensorial Universe of eternal timeless principles. Humanity being a macromicro Universe, unfolding eventuation is physically irreversible yet eternally integrated with Universe. Humanity cannot shrink and return into the womb and revert to as yet unfertilized ova.

308.00 Universe is finite because it is the sum total of finitely furnished experiences. The comprehensive set of all experiences synergetically constituting Universe discloses an astronomically numbered variety of subset event-frequency rates and their respective rates of conceptual tunability comprehension. It takes entirely different lengths of time to remember to "look up" different names or facts of past events. Universe, like the dictionary, though integral, is ipso facto nonsimultaneously recollectable; therefore, as with the set of all the words in the dictionary, it is nonsimultaneously reviewable, ergo, is synergetically incomprehensible, as of any one moment, yet is progressively revealing.
 

In reading Synergetics, it becomes abundantly clear where the Wachowski brothers got the speech mannerisms for the Architect.

Sometimes you read this and think that Buckminster Fuller was a genius and cometimes you just think that he really liked tetrahedrons more than is entirely appropriate.