BUCKMINSTER FULLER GRAPH FROM HIS "WORLD GAME" FINDINGS OF THE PERCENTAGE OF
THE WORLD POPULATION WHO COULD BE SEEN TO BE “HAVES” IN THE MODERN
EXPERIENCE IN TERMS OF OUR ABSTRACT TECHNOLOGICALLY AUGMENTED “CAPABILITY”
TO PROVIDE “LIFE SUPPORT” TO THE WORLD POPULATION. FURTHERMORE BOTH
“GROWTH AND EQUITY” COULD BE REALIZED WITHIN AN ECOLOGICALLY APPROPRIATE
MANNER THROUGH THE INCREASING ELEGANCE OF “GOOD DESIGN TEMPLATES – “DOING
MORE WITH LESS”. THINK MOORE’S LAW WRIT LARGE. HE PROJECTED FROM THE YEAR
1952 “A TWENTY YEAR PERIOD OF IMMINENT CRISIS TO ALL HUMAN INSTITUTIONS AS
WE APPROACHED AND CROSSED THE 50% MARK." HE LIVED OUT HIS LIFE IN THE
BELIEF THE PROCESS HAD ACCELERATED AND THAT WE CROSSED THE 50% MARK IN 1970.
REMEMBER
THIS IS “DESIGN CAPABILITY” NOT THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
INSTITUTIONAL ASSUMPTIONS AND NOTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE INHERITED FROM
HISTORY. TO BRIDGE THE TWO IS MANKIND’S MOST PRESSING CHALLENGE. HE
PROVIDED THIS MAJOR PREMISE "PATTERN" TO HELP US ENGAGE IN THE BRIDGE
BUILDING WORK.
Bucky had it right. “You
never change things by fighting the existing
reality. To change something, build a new model
that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The 2009 Challenge begins this fall. Stay
tuned...
If you would like to receive email updates about
the 2009 Challenge, please send a request to
challenge (at) bfi (dot)
org with the
word “subscribe” in the subject line.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute invites you
to attend a week of gallery openings, panel
sessions, film screenings, and celebrations
taking place June 23rd through June 28th in New
York City.
Click "Read More" below to see the full schedule
of events.
Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the
Universe
on view June 26, 2008-September 21, 2008
R. Buckminster Fuller
(1895-1983) was one of the great American
visionaries of the 20th century. Best-known as
the inventor of the geodesic dome, Fuller
devoted much of his life to resolving the gap
between the sciences and the humanities, which
he believed was preventing society from taking a
comprehensive view of the world. His theories
and innovations traversed the worlds of
architecture, visual art, literature,
mathematics, molecular biology, and
environmental science and have had a deep impact
on all of those fields.
In addition to the Whitney Museum show, there
will be a number of exciting events throughout
June in New York City. We will announce the
details as they become available.
“Dr. John Todd’s comprehensive design strategy
to bring about a carbon neutral world, in the
opinion of this jury, best embodies the bold,
visionary approach to large scale societal
transformation pioneered by Buckminster Fuller.
Dr. Todd’s proposal sets forth a profound vision
to heal the environmental and economic scars of
the Appalachian region and a detailed strategy
to build a dynamic sustainable economic basis
for lasting renewal,” said the Buckminster
Fuller Challenge jurors in a statement about
their decision.
“Dr. Todd’s vision sets forth a new theory of
ecological design weaving together a set of
processes - from restoration of land to
geo-sequestration of carbon, to community
involvement, to long-term economic vitality - to
create a blueprint for a future for Appalachia
that envisions a harmonious self-sustaining
community. This is one of the only true whole
systems projects that is place based but widely
applicable.”
Click here
to download the full statement from the jury [pdf].
Allegra Fuller Snyder, Fuller’s daughter,
remarked, “My father identified himself as a
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist.
Each word is essential to understanding in what
way he felt an individual must be competent to
be effective in fully implementing constructive
visions for our collective planetary future.
John Todd’s response meets that Challenge,
literally and figuratively. My father, who knew,
and admired, Dr. Todd’s work in the 1970s, would
certainly agree.”
Throughout his life, Fuller was
concerned with the question "Does
humanity
have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on
planet Earth, and if so, how?" Considering himself an
average individual without special monetary means or
academic degree,[3]
he chose to devote his life to this question, trying to find
out what an individual like him could do to improve
humanity's condition that large organizations, governments,
or private enterprises inherently could not do.
Pursuing this lifelong experiment,
Fuller wrote more than thirty books, coining and
popularizing terms such as
"Spaceship Earth",
ephemeralization,
and
synergetics.
He also worked in the development of numerous inventions,
chiefly in the fields of design and architecture, the best
known of which is the
geodesic dome.
Carbon molecules known as
fullerenes
or buckyballs were named for their resemblance to a geodesic
sphere.
Late in his life, after working on
his concepts for several decades, Fuller had achieved
considerable public visibility. He traveled the world giving
lectures, and received numerous honorary doctorates. Most of
his inventions, however, never made it into production, and
he was strongly criticized in most fields he tried to
influence such as architecture, or simply dismissed as a
hopeless
utopian.
Fuller's proponents, on the other hand, claim that his work
has not yet received the attention that it deserves.
Fuller was born on
July 12,
1895,
in
Milton,
Massachusetts,
the son of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline Wolcott
Andrews, and also the grandnephew of the
American Transcendentalist
Margaret Fuller.
He attended Froebelian Kindergarten. Spending his youth on
Bear Island, in
Penobscot Bay
off the coast of Maine, he was a boy with a natural
propensity for design and for making things. He often made
things from materials he brought home from the woods, and
sometimes made his own tools. He experimented with designing
a new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats. Years
later he decided that this sort of experience had provided
him with not only an interest in design, but a habit of
being fully familiar and knowledgeable about the materials
that his later projects would require. Fuller earned a
machinist's
certification, and knew how to use the press brake, stretch
press, and other tools and equipment used in the
sheet metal
trade.[4]
Fuller was sent to
Milton Academy,
in Massachusetts. Afterwards, he began studying at
Harvard
but was expelled from the university twice: first, for
entertaining an entire dance troupe; and second, for his
"irresponsibility and lack of interest." By his own
appraisal, he was a non-conforming misfit in the fraternity
environment.[4]
(Many years later, Fuller received a
Sc.D.
from
Bates College.)
Between his sessions at
Harvard,
he worked in Canada as a mechanic in a textile mill, and
later as a laborer in the meat packing industry. He married
Anne Hewlett in
1917,
and also served in the
U.S. Navy
in
World War I
as a shipboard radio operator, as an editor of a
publication, and as a crash-boat commander. After discharge,
he again worked in meat packing, where he acquired
management experience. In the early 1920s he and his
father-in-law developed the Stockade Building System for
producing light weight, weatherproof, and fireproof housing
— though ultimately the company failed.[4]
In
1927
at the age of 32,
bankrupt
and jobless, living in inferior housing in
Chicago, Illinois,
Fuller lost his young daughter Alexandra to complications
from
polio
and
spinal meningitis.
He felt responsible, and this drove him to drink and to the
verge of
suicide.
At the last moment he decided instead to embark on "an
experiment, to find what a single individual can contribute
to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."
By
1928,
Fuller was living in
Greenwich Village
and spending a lot of time at
Romany Marie's[5]
where he had spent a fascinating evening in conversation
with Marie and
Eugene O'Neill
several years earlier.[6]
Fuller took on the interior decoration of the
café
in exchange for meals,[5]
giving informal lectures several times a week,[6][7]
and models of the
Dymaxion house
were exhibited at the café.
Isamu Noguchi
showed up in
1929
—
Constantin Brâncuşi,
an old friend of
Marie's,[8]
had directed him there[5]
— and Noguchi and Fuller were soon collaborating on several
projects[7][9]
including the modeling of the
Dymaxion car.[10]
It was the beginning of their lifelong friendship.
Fuller taught at
Black Mountain College
in
North Carolina
during the summers of 1948 and 1949,[11]
serving as its Summer Institute director in 1949. There,
with the support of a group of professors and students, he
began work on the project that would make him famous and
revolutionize the field of engineering, the
geodesic dome.
One of the early models was first constructed in 1945 at
Bennington College
in Vermont, where he frequently lectured. In
1949,
he erected the world’s first geodesic dome building that
could sustain its own weight with no practical limits. It
was 4.3 meters (14 feet) in diameter and constructed of
aluminum aircraft tubing and a vinyl-plastic skin, in the
form of a
tetrahedron.
To prove his design, Bucky and several students who helped
build it hung from the structure’s framework to awe
non-believers. The U.S. government recognized the importance
of the discovery and employed him to make small domes for
the army. Within a few years there were thousands of these
domes around the world.
For the next half-century Fuller
contributed a wide range of ideas, designs and inventions to
the world, particularly in the areas of practical,
inexpensive shelter and transportation. He documented his
life, philosophy and ideas scrupulously in a daily
diary
(later called the
Dymaxion Chronofile)
and in twenty-eight publications. Fuller financed some of
his experiments with inherited funds, sometimes augmented by
funds invested by his collaborators, one example being the
Dymaxion Car
project.
International recognition came with
the success of his huge
geodesic domes
in the 1950s. Fuller taught at
Washington University in St. Louis
in 1955 where he met James Fitzgibbon a close friend and
colleague. Fuller taught from 1959 at
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale as an assistant
professor, receiving full professorship in 1968 in the
School of Art and Design through 1970. Working as a
designer, scientist, developer, and writer, for many years
he lectured around the world on design. Fuller collaborated
at SIU with the designer
John McHale.
In 1965 Fuller inaugurated the
World Design Science Decade
(1965 to 1975) at the meeting of the
International Union of Architects
in
Paris,
that was in his own words devoted to "applying the
principles of science to solving the problems of humanity."
Fuller believed human societies
would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such
as solar- and wind-derived electricity. He hoped for an age
of "omni-successful education and sustenance of all
humanity."
He died on
July 1,
1983,
at the age of 87, a
guru
of the design, architecture, and 'alternative' communities
such as
Drop City,
the experimental artists community to whom he awarded the
1966 "Dymaxion Award" for "poetically economic" domed living
structures. His wife was comatose and dying of cancer and
while visiting her in the hospital he exclaimed at one
point: "She is squeezing my hand!" He then stood up,
suffered a heart attack and died an hour later. His wife
died 36 hours later. He is buried in
Mount Auburn Cemetery
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Philosophy and worldview
The grandson of a
Unitarian
minister (Arthur Buckminster Fuller),[13]
R. Buckminster Fuller was also Unitarian.[14]
Buckminster Fuller was an early environmental activist. He
was very aware of the finite resources the planet has to
offer, and promoted a principle that he termed "ephemeralization"—which
in essence, according to futurist and Fuller disciple
Stewart Brand,
Fuller coined to mean "doing more with less."[15]
Resources and waste material from cruder products could be
recycled into making higher value products, increasing the
efficiency of the entire process. Fuller also introduced
synergetics,
a metaphoric language for communicating experiences using
geometric concepts, long before the term
synergy
became popular.
Fuller was one of the first to
propagate a
systemic
worldview
and explored principles of
energy
and
material efficiency
in the fields of
architecture,
engineering
and
design.[16][17]
He cited Francois de Chardenedes' view that
petroleum,
from the standpoint of its replacement cost out of our
current energy "budget", essentially the incoming
solar flux,
had cost nature "over a million dollars" per U.S. gallon
(US$300,000 per litre) to produce. From this point of view
its use as a transportation fuel by people commuting to work
represents a huge net loss compared to their earnings.[18]
Fuller was concerned about
sustainability
and about human survival under the existing socio-economic
system, yet optimistic about humanity's future. Defining
wealth in terms of knowledge, as the "technological ability
to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth
needs of life", his analysis of the condition of "Spaceship
Earth" led him to conclude that at a certain time in the
1970s, humanity had crossed an unprecedented watershed.
Fuller was convinced that the accumulation of relevant
knowledge, combined with the quantities of key recyclable
resources that had already been extracted from the earth,
had reached a critical level, such that competition for
necessities was no longer necessary. Cooperation had become
the optimum survival strategy. "Selfishness", he declared,
"is unnecessary and...unrationalizable...War is obsolete..."[19]
Fuller also claimed that the
natural
analytic geometry
of the universe was based on arrays of
tetrahedra.
He developed this in several ways, from the close-packing of
spheres and the number of compressive or tensile members
required to stabilize an object in space. Some confirming
results were that the strongest possible homogeneous
truss
is cyclically tetrahedral.[citation
needed]
His technologically oriented point
of view can also be taken as a metaphor for what it is to be
human generally. In his 1970 book I Seem To Be a Verb,
he wrote: "I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what
I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a
noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an
integral function of the universe."
Major
design projects
Fuller was most famous for his
geodesic domes,
which can be seen as part of military radar stations, civic
buildings, environmental protest camps and exhibition
attractions.
Walther Bauersfeld
was in all probability the source of this concept. In
Chapter 3, of Buckminster Fuller's Book 'CRITICAL PATH', he
writes:-
"....I found a similar situation to
be existent in World War II. As head mechanical engineer of
the U.S.A. Board of Economic Warfare I had available to me
copies of any so-called intercepts I wanted. Those were
transcriptions of censor-listened-to intercontinental
telephone conversations, along with letters and cables that
were opened by the censor and often deciphered, and so
forth. As a student of patents I asked for and received all
the intercept information relating to strategic patents held
by both our enemies and our own big corporations,..."
Supporting this view, an
examination of the design by Dr. Walther Bauersfeld's
geodesic design for the Zeiss Planetarium, reveals that it
is an exact duplicate of Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome
Patent.
Their construction is based on
extending some basic principles to build simple
tensegrity
structures (tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing
of spheres), making them lightweight and stable. The patent
for geodesic domes was awarded in 1954, part of Fuller's
exploration of nature's constructing principles to find
design solutions. The Fuller Dome is referenced in the
Hugo Award
winning novel
Stand on Zanzibar
by
John Brunner,
where a geodesic dome is said to cover the entire island of
Manhattan, but, due to hot-air balloon effect of the large
air-mass under the dome, (and perhaps its construction of
lightweight materials), it floats on air.[20]
Previously, Fuller had designed and
built prototypes of what he hoped would be a safer,
aerodynamic
Dymaxion car
("Dymaxion" is contracted from DYnamic MAXimum tensION,
however it has also been reported that the name is a
combination of the words dynamic, maximum, and ion, per the
National Automobile Museum.)
He worked with professional colleagues over a period of
three years beginning in 1932. Based on a design idea Fuller
had derived from aircraft, the three prototype cars were
different from anything on the market. They had three
wheels, with two (the drive wheels) in front, and the third,
rear wheel being the one that was steered. The engine was in
the rear, with the chassis and the body being original
designs. The aerodynamic, somewhat tear-shaped body (which
in one of the prototypes was about 5.5 metres or 18 feet
long), was large enough to seat 11 people. It resembled a
melding of a light aircraft (without wings) and a Volkswagen
van of 1950s vintage. The car was essentially a mini-bus in
each of its three trial incarnations, and its concept long
predated the
Volkswagen Type 2
mini-bus conceived in 1947 by
Ben Pon.
Despite its length, and due to its
three-wheel design, the Dymaxion Car turned on a small
radius and parked in a tight space quite nicely. The
prototypes were efficient in fuel consumption for their day.
Fuller poured a great deal of his own money into the
project, in addition to funds from one of his professional
collaborators. An industrial investor was also keenly
interested in the concept. Fuller anticipated the car could
travel on an open highway safely at up to about 160 km/h
(100 miles per hour). Due to some concept oversights, they
were unruly above 80 km/h (50 mph), and difficult to steer.
Research ended after one of the prototypes was involved in a
collision resulting in a fatality.
In 1943, industrialist
Henry J. Kaiser
asked Fuller to develop a prototype for a smaller car, and
Fuller designed a five-seater which never went beyond
development.
Another of Fuller's ideas was the
alternative-projection
Dymaxion map.
This was designed to show the Earth's continents with
minimum distortion when projected or printed on a flat
surface.
Fuller's energy-efficient and
low-cost
Dymaxion House
garnered much interest, but has never gone into production.
Here the term "Dymaxion" is used in effect to signify a
"radically strong and light tensegrity structure". One of
Fuller's Dymaxion Houses is on display as a permanent
exhibit at
The Henry Ford
in Dearborn, Michigan. Designed and developed in the
mid-1940s, this prototype is a round structure (not a dome),
shaped something like the flattened "bell" of certain
jellyfish. It has several innovative features, including
revolving dresser drawers, and a fine-mist shower that
reduces water consumption. According to Fuller biographer
Steve Crooks, the house was designed to be delivered in two
cylindrical packages, with interior color panels available
at local dealers. A circular structure at the top of the
house was designed to rotate around a central mast to use
natural winds for cooling and air circulation.
Conceived nearly two decades
before, and developed in Wichita, Kansas, the house was
designed to be lightweight and adapted to windy climes. It
was to be inexpensive to produce and purchase, and easily
assembled. It was to be produced using factories, workers
and technologies that had produced World War II aircraft. It
was ultramodern-looking at the time, built of metal, and
sheathed in polished aluminum. The basic model enclosed 90
m² (1000 square feet) of floor area. Due to publicity, there
were many orders in the early Post-War years, but the
company that Fuller and others had formed to produce the
houses failed due to management problems.
Words Coined (Bucky-isms)
Livingry is juxtaposed to weaponry and
killingry and means that which is in support of all
human, plant, and Earth life. "The architectural
profession--civil, naval, aeronautical, and astronautica—has
always been the place where the most competent thinking
is conducted regarding livingry, as opposed to
weaponry."—Critical Path, page xxv
Tensegrity is a contraction of tensional
integrity. "Tensegrity describes a
structural-relationship principle in which structural
shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed,
comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the
system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively
local compressional member behaviors. Tensegrity
provides the ability to yield increasingly without
ultimately breaking or coming asunder" —Synergetics,
page 372
Quirks
Fuller was a frequent flier, often crossing time zones.
He famously wore three watches; one for the current zone,
one for the zone he had departed, and one for the zone he
was going to.
Practical achievements
Certainly, a number of Fuller's projects did not meet
success in terms of commitment from industry or acceptance
by a broad public. However, many geodesic domes have been
built and are in use. According to the
Buckminster Fuller Institute Web site, the largest
geodesic-dome structures (listed in descending order from
largest diameter) are:
Fuller's development of the dome and his roles as a
philosopher and as a gadfly within the design and
architectural communities left an important legacy. He
introduced a number of concepts, and if every one wasn't
entirely new, we can still say that he honed each one well.
More than 500,000 geodesic domes have been built around
the world. Some notable ones include the 80.8-meter
(265-foot) wide Spaceship Earth at Disney World's
Epcot Center in Florida, a 109.7-meter (360-foot) tall
dome over a shopping center in downtown Ankara, Turkey, and
a 85.3-meter (280-foot) high dome enclosing a civic center
in Stockholm, Sweden. The world’s largest aluminum dome
formerly housed the “Spruce
Goose” airplane in Long Beach Harbor, California.
However, domes are not an everyday sight in most places.
Contrary to initial hopes, in practice, most of the smaller
owner-built geodesic structures had drawbacks (see
geodesic domes). As a home, many people have been put
off by the domes' unconventional appearance.
An interesting spin-off of Fuller's dome-design
conceptualization was the
Buckminster Ball, which was the official FIFA approved
design for footballs (soccer balls), from their introduction
at the 1970 World Cup until recently. The design was
essentially a "Geodesic Sphere", consisting of 12 pentagonal
and 20 hexagonal panels. This was used continuously for 34
years until it was replaced by a
14-panel version in the 2006 World Cup.
While an envisioned widespread and common adoption of
geodesic domes is yet to materialize, Fuller's ideas,
teachings, and attitude to life and creativity, in
combination, have prodded designers and engineers. What
Fuller accomplished, in that sense, was to make
professionals and students think "outside the box"; to
question convention. Fuller was followed (historically) by
other designers and architects (for example,
Sir Norman Foster and
Steve Baer) willing to explore the possibilities of new
geometries in the design of buildings, not based on
conventional rectangles. The English writer, playwright, and
philosopher
John Dryden wrote something quite relevant to the
pioneering forays of Fuller still to be brought to full
result: "We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may
polish it at leisure."
An
allotrope of
carbon -
fullerene, and a particular molecule of that
allotrope C60 (buckminsterfullerene
or buckyball) has been named after him. The
Buckminsterfullerene molecule, which consists of 60
carbon atoms, very closely resembles a spherical version
of Fuller's geodesic dome (or Soccer ball). The 1996
Nobel prize in chemistry was given to Kroto, Curl,
Smalley for their discovery of fullerenes.[8]
On
July 12,
2004, the
United States Post Office released a new
commemorative stamp honoring R. Buckminster Fuller on
the 50th anniversary of his patent for the geodesic dome
and on the occasion of his 109th birthday.
Fuller documented his life every 15 minutes from
1915 to 1983, leaving 80 meters (270 feet) of journals.
He called this the
Dymaxion Chronofile. That is said to be the most
documented human life in history.
He dedicated the US Pavilion dome at
Expo 67 to his wife Anne when they celebrated their
50th wedding anniversary there.
Around 1979-1980, Bucky shared a lecture tour across
America with philosopher
Werner Erhard.
"If somebody kept a very accurate record of a
human being, going through the era from the Gay 90s,
from a very different kind of world through the turn of
the century — as far into the twentieth century as you
might live. I decided to make myself a good case history
of such a human being and it meant that I could not be
judge of what was valid to put in or not. I must put
everything in, so I started a very rigorous record."
[9]
[10]
Buckminster and
John Denver were very close friends and the song
"What One Man Can Do" on John's 1982 album "Seasons of
the Heart" was written for Buckminster's 85th birthday.
John dedicated the song to him.
He is quoted with saying "I think that we are
clinging to a great many piano tops."
Use of language and
neologisms
Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and
thought it crucial to describe the world as accurately as
possible.[21]
Fuller often created long run-on sentences and used unusual
compound words (omniwell-informed, intertransformative,
omni-interaccommodative, omniself-regenerative) as well as
terms he himself coined.[22]
Fuller used the word 'Universe' without the definite or
indefinite articles (a or the) and always capitalized the
word. Universe to Fuller meant the sum of all experience.[23]
The words 'down' and 'up,' according to Fuller, are
awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction
inconsistent with human experience. The words 'in' and 'out'
should be used instead, he argued, because they better
describe an object's relation to a gravitational center, the
Earth.[24]
'World-around' is a term coined by Fuller to replace
worldwide. The general belief in a
flat Earth died out in the
Middle Ages, so using wide is an
anachronism when referring to the surface of the Earth —
a
spheroidal surface has
area and encloses a
volume, but has no width. Fuller held that unthinking
use of
obsolete scientific ideas detracts from and misleads
intuition. The terms sunsight and sunclipse
are other neologisms, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder,
collectively coined by the Fuller family, replacing
sunrise and sunset in order to overturn the
geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican
celestial mechanics. Fuller also coined the phrase
Spaceship Earth, and coined the term (but did not
invent)
tensegrity.
It has also been claimed that Fuller coined the phrase
debunk in 1927, but many credit
William Woodward for the term in 1923.
^
ab Lloyd Steven Sieden.
Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work
(pp. 74, 119-142). New York:
Perseus Books Group, 2000.
ISBN 0-73820-379-3. p. 74: “Although
O'Neill soon became well known as a major
American playwright, it was
Romany Marie who would significantly influence
Bucky, becoming his close friend and confidante
during the most difficult years of his life.”
^
Fuller, R. Buckminster; Applewhite, E. J. (1975).
Synergetics. New York: Macmillan.
ISBN 002541870X.
^
Fuller, R. Buckminster (1981). Critical Path.
New York: St. Martin's Press, pp. xxxiv-xxxv.
ISBN 0312174888.
^
Fuller, R. Buckminster (1981). "Introduction",
Critical Path, First Edition (in English), New
York, N.Y.: St.Martin's Press, p. xxv.
ISBN 0-312-17488-8. “"It no longer has to be you
or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth
unrationalizable as mandated by survival. War is
obsolete.”
^ "What is important in this connection is
the way in which humans reflex spontaneously for
that is the way in which they usually behave in
critical moments, and it is often "common sense" to
reflex in perversely ignorant ways that produce
social disasters by denying knowledge and ignorantly
yielding to common sense." Intuition, 1972
Doubleday, New York. p.103
^ He wrote a single unpuncuated sentence
approximately 3000 words long titled "What I Am
Trying to Do." And It Came to Pass - Not to Stay
Macmillan Publishing, New York, 1976.
^ I can define many of its parts but I
cannot define simultaneously the nonsimultaneously
occurring aggregate of partially overlapping
experiences whose total set of local scenario
relationships constitutes Universe though the later
as an aggregate of finites is finite. "How Little I
Know" from And It Came to Pass - Not to Stay
^ "I suggest to audiences that they say,
"I'm going 'outstairs' and 'instairs.'" At first
that sounds strange to them; They all laugh about
it. But if they try saying in and out for a few days
in fun, they find themselves beginning to realize
that they are indeed going inward and outward in
respect to the center of Earth, which is our
Spaceship Earth. And for the first time they begin
to feel real "reality." Intuition (1972)
Further reading
Synergetic Stew: Explorations In Dymaxion Dining.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute, Philadelphia.
paperback. 1982 (ISBN
0-911573-00-3)
Alden Hatch Buckminster Fuller At Home In The
Universe. 1974 (ISBN
0-440-04408-1) Crown Publishers, New York.
Brenneman, Richard. Fuller's Earth, A Day With
Bucky And The Kids St. Martin's Press, New York, c.
1984. hardcover (ISBN
0-312-30981-3)
Buckminster Fuller also appears as a character in
Paul Wühr's book "Das falsche Buch".
Donald Robertson Mind's Eye Of Buckminster Fuller.
1974 (ISBN
0-533-01017-9) Vantage Press, Inc., New York.
E. J. Applewhite Cosmic Fishing: An account of
writing Synergetics with Buckminster Fuller. 1977 (ISBN
0-02-502710-7)
E. J. Applewhite, ed. Synergetics Dictionary, The
Mind Of Buckminster Fuller; in four volumes. Garland
Publishing, Inc. New York and London. 1986 (ISBN
0-8240-8729-1)
Eastham, Scott: American Dreamer. Bucky Fuller
and the Sacred Geometry of Nature; The Lutterworth
Press 2007, Cambridge;
ISBN 9780718830311
Edmondson, Amy: "A Fuller Explanation";
EmergentWorld LLC. 2007 (ISBN
978-0-6151-8314-5)
Hugh Kenner Bucky: A guided tour of Buckminster
Fuller. 1973 (ISBN
0-688-00141-6)
Krausse, Joachim and Lichtenstein, Claude. ed.
Your Private Sky, R. Buckminster Fuller: The Art Of
Design Science. Lars Mueller Publishers. 1999 (ISBN
3-907044-88-6)
Lloyd Sieden Buckminster Fuller's Universe, His
Life and Work. 1989 (ISBN
0-7382-0379-3), explores Fuller's personal life, his
beliefs and drives.
Lord, V. Athena. Pilot For Spaceship Earth.
Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., New York. hardback.
1978 (ISBN
0-02-761420-4)
Martin Pawley Buckminster Fuller. 1991 (ISBN
0-8008-1116-X), offers an architectural critic's
assessment of Fuller's ideas and projects.
McHale, John. R. Buckminster Fuller. George
Brazillier, Inc., New York. hardback. 1962.
Potter, R. Robert. Buckminster Fuller (Pioneers
in Change Series). Silver Burdett Publishers. 1990 (ISBN
0-382-09972-9)
Sidney Rosen Wizard of the Dome: R. Buckminster
Fuller, Designer for the Future. 1969 (ISBN
0-316-75707-1)
Snyder, Robert. Buckminster Fuller: An
Autobiographical Monologue/Scenario. St. Martin's
Press, New York. hardback. 1980 (ISBN
0-312-24547-5)
Ward, James. Ed. The Artifacts Of R. Buckminster
Fuller, A Comprehensive Collection of His Designs and
Drawings in Four Volumes: Volume One. The Dymaxion
Experiment, 1926-1943; Volume Two. Dymaxion Deployment,
1927-1946; Volume Three. The Geodesic Revolution, Part
1, 1947-1959; Volume Four. The Geodesic Revolution, Part
2, 1960-1983: Edited with descriptions by James
Ward. Garland Publishing, New York. 1984 (ISBN
0-8240-5082-7
vol. 1,
ISBN 0-8240-5083-5
vol. 2,
ISBN 0-8240-5084-3
vol. 3,
ISBN 0-8240-5085-1
vol. 4)
Zung, T.K. Thomas. Buckminster Fuller: Anthology
for a New Millennium. St. Martin’s Press. 2001 (ISBN
0-312-26639-1)
Erle,
Schuyler; Gibson, Rich; & Walsh, Jo (2005). Mapping
Hacks. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
ISBN 0-596-00703-5.
Preface dedicates book to Bucky and relates the
potential of networked
virtual globes to Bucky's Geoscope.
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