Synergetics and its Historical context
- Syn-U
- 5 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
"As with Descartes and Plato, geometry has been revered for millenia as a branch of mathematical knowledge that has risen periodically to become the standard for all knowledge. In this sense, geometry is a tradition. The tradition of geometry is the history of its imposition as a standard upon knowledge. It is distinct from the tradition of philosophy on account of its concern with a single form of knowledge (Husserl imagined a 'Thales of geometry'). How does Synergetics stand in relation to this tradition? It imposes its particular geometry as the new standard for all knowledge."
-Dante Diotallevi
The Bauersfeld Zeiss Dome - 1926
Oftentimes people criticize Fuller for claiming to invent the Geodesic dome and other artifacts, when others had already created examples of them before him. One such example is the Zeiss dome built in Jena, Germany by Walther Bauersfeld in 1926 — 25 years before Fuller patented the Geodesic Dome.
Fuller sought to develop Synergetics and the models therein by starting from the fundamental, observable generalized principles in Universe. When reading Synergetics, it is obvious that Fuller was not looking to Bauersfeld for his geometric approach to innovation, but rather, was working with first principles to model natures energetic transference patterns — starting with the tetrahedron as the prime volume in the omni-triangulated event constellations considered in Universe.
Synergetics did not arise in a vacuum though — the rich history of geometry and modeling "divine" proportions found in nature created the intellectual landscape by which Synergetics became necessary. The exponential growth in innovation, computation and communication that humanity saw between 1895 and 1983 (a Bucky lifetime) was fertile soil for a renaissance in design and pattern thinking to be sewn. We are currently in the gestation period of that seed of Design Science as it finds its roots amidst the turbulent acres of humanity's seeking.
Alexander Graham Bell,
widely known as the inventor of the Telephone, created magnificent Tetrahedral kites that showcased alternating Tetrahedra and Octahedra patternings, one of the fundamental explorations in Synergetics. Many of these photos are from 1905, when Buckminster Fuller was around 10 years old.
"By locating the source of his innovations and patents in nature, Fuller could sidestep the inevitable challenges to the originality of his work. Alexander Graham Bell’s experiments with tetrahedral kites and space-frame towers were a key precedent to Fuller, though one he insisted was brought to his attention long after he reached his independent conclusions. The fact that he had unknowingly pursued investigations similar to Bell’s was added proof that a universal coordinated system existed. ‘‘It’s the way nature behaves, so we both discovered nature. It isn’t something you invent. You discover it.’’ -K. Micheal Hays, Dana Miller "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe"
There were various scholars of the 20th century whom Fuller saw as influential in solving nature's design challenges in ways that were compatible with Synergetic pattern analysis. For example, Fuller dedicated Synergetics to Harold Coxeter, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest geometers of the 20th century, and Dutch scientist and crystallographer Arthur Loeb wrote the prologue and appendices in Synergetics.
"Buckminster Fuller's search for a natural and truly rational coordinate system eventually led to the tensegrity concept and the construction of geodesic domes. Polyhedra and pentagrams, being proven useful after all, have been rescued from the limbo of superstition. Now the danger exists that geometrics will become respectable once more, and it behooves us to take a good look at the very unorthodox peregrinations of Fuller's mind before stepping into the inviting straitjacket. One of the most intriguing aspects of the present book is that there are so few ex post facto rationalizations; Fuller allows us to share his methods, his meanderings, the early influences."
-Arthur Loeb "Synergetics"
Bucky met with Einstein in 1936, who apparently expressed intrigue about Fuller's work. Einstein is mentioned many times throughout Synergetics and his famous equation seems to fit right into Fuller's accounting. Fuller saw Synergetics as the embracing, accomodating framework by which the many specialized studies of science converge - the throughline by which the generalized principles discovered by Einstein, Russel, Euler and others were united in a common language.
987.075 Although Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell did not recognize the full conceptual implications, their "new mathematics" of set theory and empty sets were tour de force attempts by the leading abstract nonconceptual mathematicians of their day to anticipate the inevitable historical convergence of their mathematics with the inherently conceptual topology of Euler, as well as with the phase rule of Gibbs in chemistry, the simplified quantum mechanics of Dirac in physics, and the homogenizing biochemistry and physics of virology's DNA-RNA design programming__all remotely but inexorably rendezvousing with Boltzmann's, Einstein's, and Hubble's astrophysics and cosmology to constitute unitary science's unitary self-regenerative, untenably equilibrious, cosmiccoordinate system to be embraced and accommodated by the epistemography of synergetics.
"One progenitor Fuller did acknowledge was D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. Thompson’s seminal 1917 book On Growth and Form demonstrated the morphological similarities of a wide variety of organic substances and the mathematical basis underlying their structure and growth. Thompson’s arguments were punctuated with illustrations by Emst Haeckel and photos by Arthur Worthington, among others, and in later versions with photos by Harold Edgerton as well."
-K. Micheal Hays, Dana Miller "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe"
Bucky's Dedication at the beginning of Synergetics:
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED TO
H. S. M. COXETER
PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
To me no experience of childhood so reinforced selfconfidence
in one's own exploratory faculties
as did geometry. Its inspiring effectiveness in
winnowing out and evaluating a plurality
of previously unknowns from a few given
knowns, and its elegance of proof
lead to the further discovery and comprehension of a
grand strategy for all
problem solving.
By virtue of his extraordinary life's work in mathematics,
Dr. Coxeter is the geometer of our bestirring
twentieth century, the spontaneously acclaimed
terrestrial curator of the historical
inventory of the science of
pattern analysis.
I dedicate this work with particular esteem for him
and in thanks to all the geometers of all time
whose importance to humanity
he epitomizes.
791.08 Humanity has inherited an inventory of generalized laws of Universe from the Copernicus-Kepler-Galileo-Newton discoveries, which they in turn inherited from their Greek, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese predecessors. There is no information to suggest that the inventory has been completed. All of the generalized laws can be expressed in mathematical terms. They are all eternally operative and interaccommodative. Together, the thus-fardiscovered generalized laws guarantee the integrity of nonsimultaneous, only partially overlapping, Scenario Universe.
16th Century Geometers
Marshall McLuhan called Bucky "the 20th century Leonardo da Vinci." At one time Bucky was famous in the United States and around the world, but his name seems to have slipped into obscurity as his books have gone out of print. Will Fuller and his work have the same longevity as Leonardo?
The 1500's were a rich time in the history of geometric modeling and the search for divine harmony in shape and form. The advent of the printing press, the renaissance of greek and roman thought in Europe and the translation of latin texts heralded a wave of geometric art and science that has remained some of the most beautiful and insightful explorations of Geometry ever published. Leonardo Da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Augustin Hirschvogel, Daniele Barbaro, Lorenz Stoer and Wenzel Jamnitzer, among others, all contributed profoundly to this renaissance of polyhedral accounting and modeling.
Johannes Kepler
"Mysterium Cosmographicum" (1596) • "Harmony of the World" (1619)
Robert Fludd
"Physical, Metaphysical and Technical History of the Macrocosm and Microcosm" (1617)
The Kepler-Fludd Polemic
The physicist Wolfgang Pauli studied the letters exchanged between Kepler and Fludd, wherein they disputed the true structure of the cosmos. Influenced by Carl Jung, Pauli traced the mystifying discoveries of quantum physics back to this decisive 'watershed moment' in early 17th century Europe. He understood their polemic as an archetypal divide between the emerging method of modern science and ancient traditions of symbolism and alchemy. Synergetics discloses the technique for healing this enduring schism of worldviews, creating harmony between science and wisdom without sacrificing standards of objectivity. Fuller's thought accomplished this in two ways: by returning to the mathematical roots of conceptual awareness and by invalidating the biases of modern skepticism. Such radical reformation of our established intellectual habits is not a straightforward process, however. Culture, like the human psyche, instinctively defends itself against threats to its integrity, whether the danger is real or merely apparent.
"As ordering operators and image-formers in this world of symbolical images, the archetypes thus function as the sought-for bridge between the sense perceptions and the ideas and are, accordingly, a necessary presupposition even for evolving a scientific theory of nature. However, one must guard against transferring this a priori of knowledge into the conscious mind and relating it to definite ideas capable of rational formulation."
-Wolfgang Pauli
"The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on Kepler's Theories" (1952)
Watch this video to learn more about Synergetics in the context of the Kepler-Fludd polemic:
986.121 Avogadro discovered that under identical conditions of pressure and heat all elements in their gaseous state always consist of the same number of molecules per given volume. Since the chemical elements are fundamentally different in electron-proton componentation, this concept seemed to me to be the "Grand Central Station" of nature's numerical coordinate system's geometric volume-that numerically exact volumes contain constant, exact numbers of fundamental energy entities. This was the numerical and geometrical constancy for which I was looking. I determined to generalize Avogadro's experimentally proven hypothesis that "under identical conditions of heat and pressure all gases disclose the same number of molecules per given volume."
Conclusion
Buckminster Fuller was a human being who grew from a complex of overlapping events that informed his functioning in Universe. His search for generalized principles, the laws of the Universe, was not a new endeavor — it is something that has probably inspired humanity since the beginning of thought itself. Fuller sought to identify the underlying framework that united the sciences and provided an effective means by which to innovate, instigate, investigate, and apply the progressively apprehended generalized principles. Synergetics was his answer to the increasingly specialized search for answers — opening the door to a comprehensive approach to problem-solving and offering humanity a way to address greater life support challenges while using fewer resources. What is the future of Synergetics? Will it be adopted on a scale that brings about changes in the world? Only time will tell. Part of our work is making sure this important work, no matter what, is not lost to history.
LINKS
The Polyhedral Perspective By Noam Andrews
When geometrical solids took hold of the Renaissance imagination, they promised the quintessence of the third dimension in its pure and unadulterated form. Noam Andrews discovers how polyhedra descended from mathematical treatises to artists’ studios, distilling abstract ideas into objects one could see and touch.
The Geometric Landscapes of Lorenz Stoer (1567)
"Not much is known about Stoer. Born in Nuremberg in the 1530s, he is said to have been a student of a student of Albrecht Dürer (who introduced the principles of linear perspective into northern Europe after studying them in Bologna)."
16th-Century Geometric and Perspective Drawings
"This sequence of increasingly complex geometrical figures and perspective drawings — collected in a sixteenth-century watercolor manuscript and preserved at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel — comes with no author's note, editor's preface, or running commentary."
A True and Thorough Instruction in Geometry (Ein aigentliche und grundtliche anweysung in die Geometria)
Early drawings of polyhedra - some of the earliest depictions of the Icosidodecahedron and Rhombicosidodecahedron
Ernst Haeckel "Kunstformen der Natur" (1899)
"Originally published in sets of ten between 1899 and 1904 and collectively in two volumes in 1904, it consists of 100 prints of various organisms, many of which were first described by Haeckel himself. Over the course of his career, over 1000 prints were produced based on Haeckel's sketches and watercolors; many of the best of these were chosen for Kunstformen der Natur, translated from sketch to print by lithographer Adolf Giltsch"
Max Brückner “Polygons and Polyhedra, Theory and History" (1900)
a richly illustrated exploration of the mathematical properties, classifications, and historical development of polygons and polyhedra, highlighting both their geometric rigor and their aesthetic significance.
Wenzel Jamnitzer "Perspectiva corporum regularium" (1568)
a masterful Renaissance work that presents highly detailed, artistically rendered perspectives of regular and semi-regular polyhedra, bridging mathematical precision with geometric artistry.
