Fuller's Unity Principle and Plato's Parmenides
- Dante Michael
- Jun 25
- 8 min read
Synergetics is full of familiar concepts presented in unusual and perplexing ways. In the opening section [100.01 Scenario of the Child], the reader will find the following statement: “Cosmic energy is plural unity, always-and-only-coexistent, complementarily complex unity”. This is the first encounter with what I call Fuller’s Unity Principle (UP). It comes down to a single and concise claim: unity is plural and at minimum two.
The UP still has a variety of expressions. Sometimes it’s just: unity is two [261.04]. Other times: unity is plural [400.08]. Whenever Fuller refers to “cosmic unity” or “complex unity”, he is invoking the UP. It is a principle central to Fuller’s thought in the widest sense, which means that we should aim to understand it as clearly as possible. As with many ideas in Synergetics, Fuller's language quickly becomes an obstacle to reaching any consensus on how the UP should be interpreted. I'll do my best to stick to the clearest logical forms of conventional reasoning.
Arguments about the nature of unity have a long history in philosophy. Plato’s dialogue ‘Parmenides’ raises a key distinction that can help us to get a grasp on Fuller’s UP. The Parmenides has a reputation of being one of Plato's most challenging dialogues since it concerns the nature of the Platonic Forms in relation to physical things. One of the central questions here is how many particular things can 'participate' in a single form (e.g. many trees have in them the singular form of tree). In the course of his discussion with the literal Parmenides, Socrates states the following (130a):
“So if - in the case of sticks and stones and such things - someone tries to show that the same thing is many and one, we’ll say that he is demonstrating something to be many and one, not the one to be many or the many to one - and we’ll say that he is saying nothing astonishing, but just what all of us would agree to. But if someone first distinguishes as separate the forms, themselves by themselves, of the things I was talking about a moment ago - for example, likeness and unlikeness, multitude and oneness, rest and motion, and everything of that sort - and then shows that in themselves they can mix together and separate, I for my part would be utterly amazed.”
There's an important clarification here that is relevant to Fuller's UP. It’s quite a plain observation that I am one human being that is made of many parts. Most everyone would agree that this is true. So this relationship between unity and plurality is trivial. I don't believe the UP in Synergetics should be read in this way, since it wouldn't make a very powerful principle to base one's thinking on. However, there is another possible relation between unity and plurality that Socrates alluded to above and had explicitly mentioned in the preceding paragraph of the dialogue (129a):
“If he should demonstrate this thing itself, what one is, to be many, or conversely, that many to be one - at this I’ll be astonished.”
Fuller's UP suggests something closer to the possibility of this relation. In its most radical form, it could be stated as: 1=2 (at minimum). Putting aside the obvious inequality of such a relation, on what grounds could we accept this apparent absurdity? We would surely share Socrates' astonishment were such a demonstration to be made. Let's review some basic logical questions that arise in confronting Fuller's extraordinary principle.
First, it seems unlikely that the UP is a simple equivalence of values. Fuller isn’t claiming that the value of 1 is equal to the value of 2 (or 3, 4 and so on). Not only are the values treated distinctly in other parts of Synergetics, this equivalence would raise the significant arithmetical issue of how ‘two’ is ever reached without first reaching ‘one’. Some of Fuller's other expression of the UP also suggest a more general origin from the separate categories of ‘unity’ and ‘plurality’ themselves. It's important to note that Fuller never made categorical statements to this effect (e.g. ‘all unities are plural’ or ‘some unities are plural’). He only referred to unity and plurality as propositional variables, i.e. without quantifiers.
Second, it seems to have been irrelevant to Fuller whether the UP depended on identity or indiscernibility. These represent two ways to interpret the word ‘same’, as in the sentence ‘unity is the same as plurality’. If unity and plurality are identical, then they are two words for the same thing. The famous example from classical logic is how ‘Morning Star’ and ‘Evening Star’ are two words for Venus - this is called numerical identity. If unity and plurality are indiscernible, then they have all the same properties but are not necessarily the same 'thing'. In this case, they are numerically distinct but necessarily related by logical entailment. Perhaps, whenever we conceive of unity, we conceive of plurality. We would have no way to discern between them because they share every meaningful property.
These are some of the logical concerns that typically guide philosophers. And Fuller (for better or worse) was not interested in them. As I explain in my article What is Synergetics?, Fuller's thinking was entirely original or sui generis. It admits of no justified comparison with any other examples of thinking. The best we can do is assess his language and behaviour and then judge for ourselves what was really going on. It's clear that Fuller was committed to his ideas - including the Unity Principle - on the basis of their methodological significance:
986.166 At the outset of my explorations I made the working assumption that unity is two, as combined with the experimentally demonstrable fact that every system and every systemic special case sphere is at once both a concave and a convex sphere - ergo, always inherently two spheres.
537.08 Universe Divisible by Two: Everything in Universe is divisible by two. There will always be two poles to any system. Unity is two.
It's also clear that Fuller's thinking was shaped according to the models he was able to conceive and build. Perhaps the simplest model of the UP in Synergetics is this one:
Fig. 986.161 shows one vector D whose primitive value is two. Vectors are energy relationships. The phenomenon relationship exists at minimum between two entities, and the word unity means union, which is inherently at minimum two. "Unity is plural and at minimum two" also at the outset became a prime concept of synergetics vectorial geometry. Diameter is the relative-conceptual-size determinant of a system. A diameter is the prime characteristic of the symmetrical system. The separate single system = unity. Diameter describes unity. Unity = 2.
An even more basic assumption that illustrates the UP in Synergetics is the placing of a dot on a page. This is how we represent unity [𑇐] but what is the nature of such a representation? Is it not two things, namely the dot itself and the space in which it rests? We can’t even define unity this way without an ‘other’ against which it can be perceived. Fuller argued that every triangle always divides the entire planet, creating a massive triangle outside the one on the blackboard. There are no flat surfaces or straight lines in the geometry of Synergetics.
Fig. 812.03: The Greeks defined a triangle as an area bound by a closed line of three edges and three angles. A triangle drawn on the Earth's surface is actually a spherical triangle described by three great- circle arcs. It is evident that the arcs divide the surface of the sphere into two areas, each of which is bound by a closed line consisting of three edges and three angles, ergo dividing the total area of the sphere into two complementary triangles. The area apparently "outside" one triangle is seen to be "inside" the other.
507.03 The always and only coexisting convex and concave demonstrates that unity is plural and at minimum two, in which only one is spontaneously accounted as obvious.
1009.37 What I am saying is that we have only eternity and integrity. Unity is plural in pure principle. The awareness we speak of as life is inherently immortal and equieternal.
Fuller did not arrive at the UP through abstract reasoning or writing out logical formulas in a notebook. It’s part of the relational ontology and experiential method of Synergetics; a fundamental aspect of existence and consciousness in tandem or the ‘awareness-of-otherness’. For those of us who study Synergetics, thinking of unity as plural might be intuitively coherent. The issues of categorical statements and identity vs. indiscernibility might seem too abstract and detached from reality. We would rather puzzle over the 'equieternality of life' or whether everything in Universe truly is divisible by two. These are the questions that Synergetics raises around unity in place of the normal philosophical queries. But will they astonish anyone not already acquainted with Fuller’s epistemology? Is the UP an entry point into Synergetics or do we need to wrap our heads around its geometry and topology first?
Recall what E.J. Applewhite said about Synergetics: it’s a different way of thinking. Maybe it's hopeless to force Fuller’s thinking into the logical structures of philosophy. But these structures have traditionally followed the rules of Aristotelian logic (now classical logic), which hinges on such principles as the law of non-contradiction and the law of identity (a=a). Perhaps we need an entirely new logic in order to make sense of Synergetics; an approach that would allow for contradictions and violations of identity. As mentioned in my previous post, paraconsistent logic is a relatively new development which philosophers like Graham Priest are actively promoting.
Priest’s interpretation of the Parmenides is fascinating. He argues that the Forms themselves are contradictory and further that Plato intended for readers to realize this for themselves. The contradictions extend beyond the ‘one and many’ problem and apply to other pairs such as motion and rest. These contradictions arise through the very attempt to think systematically about these concepts as universals. Every effort at remaining consistent reaches a limit. There is something about the nature of thinking that is inherently paradoxical and thoroughly inconsistent. Reason might scramble to resolve these dilemmas in order to remain consistent. But maybe we are better off facing these contradictions head on by treating them as true and real features of the objective world. This is the attitude Priest takes in his defense of dialetheism, which is still a contentious epistemic position in modern philosophy.
There is something contradictory about the sentence ‘unity is plural’. Perhaps this stems from a longstanding confusion about the nature of unity itself. Even so, I claim that the contradiction is a feature of Synergetics, not a bug. It challenges us in the same way as the Liar’s Paradox ('this sentence is false'), which is a perfectly acceptable sentence in classical logic. The problem is what the sentence means - is it true, false, both or neither? A dialetheist will say: both! And they will rest content with this contradiction without a trace of anxiety. It's something that Buddhism figured out long ago. Nevertheless, we want more from Synergetics than mere contradiction. It's a starting point, not the finish line.
So what is the meaning of Fuller's Unity Principle? We have the geometry of Synergetics to help us work through its range of possible meanings (topology seems to be the most useful). Merging Fuller's thinking with 'traditional thinking' challenges the habits we’ve acquired from Aristotle’s logic, which have only been further cemented in the 20th century by classical logic. Our efforts to wrest meaning from Synergetics will emerge from this interface between subversive logic and accepted logic. It will inevitably produce a theory of truth that defies rational orthodoxy, upending standards of criticism and potentially leaving us uncertain and vulnerable. As Fuller would tell us: dare to be naive, even if it means going back to the very beginning.
About the Author:
Dante Diotallevi is an independent scholar living in Canada. He holds a BSc. in Biology and an M.A. in Philosophy from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
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