Week 7: Future Worlds, Notes from Readings - Buckminster Fuller
Fuller is also known as the father of sustainability, and was driven by his intention “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.”
Fuller worked as a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist” to solve global problems surrounding housing, shelter, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty. In his prolific career,
https://joelinker.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/earth-glass-half-empty-or-fuller-operating-manual-for-spaceship-earth/
The whole idea is a metaphor, comparing the planet to a machine. Is Earth a machine? What are the implications of our thinking of the planet as a machine? If it’s a spaceship, who’s in control? Who’s the captain? Where is the crew, and what are their jobs, or roles? Where are we going?
“I think it’s very significant that there is no instruction book for successfully operating our ship.” So the manual, whatever we call it, should provide both physical and mental information for the user to successfully work the machine.
In Fuller’s terms, this includes physical and metaphysical work
Thus, because the instruction manual was missing we are learning how we safely can anticipate the consequences of an increasing number of alternative ways of extending our satisfactory survival and growth – both physical and metaphysical.”
Using this formula of valuation, what’s the current value of Earth? What would it cost to replace it (replacement cost)?
Thinking of Earth as a spaceship reorients our position
Are we lost in space? And are we running out of fuel? Are we beginning to feel entropic effects? Should we start shopping around for a new planet? A new spaceship?
https://phibetaiota.net/2009/06/operating-manual-for-spaceship-earth-2/
Though written in the 1970 this metaphor, or perhaps its simply a realisation, provides a framework which encompasses many of the problems of sustainable living we are current
He states that man’s challenge is to comprehend the metaphysical whole, and much of the book is focused on the fact, in his view, that computers are the salvation of mankind in that they can take over all the automaton work, and free man to think, experiment, and innovate.
There is a fascinating discussion of two disconnected scholars, one studying the extinction of human groups, the other the extinction of animal species, and when someone brings them together, they discover that precisely the same cause applied to both: over-specialization and a loss of diversity.
He observes that we must preserve our fossil fuels as the “battery” of our Spaceship Earth, and focus on creating our true “engine,” regenerative renewable life and energy.
http://joshshear.com/2009/05/thought-review-operating-manual-for-spaceship-earth-by-r-buckminster-fuller/
Synergy. This is the big thing I needed to read again. We have become increasingly specialized as we’ve “progressed” in industrialization. You need your pipes fixed? Call a plumber. You need your wires fixed? Call an electrician. You need a tooth fixed? Don’t call an orthopedist.
Fuller’s idea is that while it’s nice to have people around who know their fields really well, we need more people who can dabble in a variety of industries, and who can bring together specialists if and when needed.
https://steemit.com/science/@matrjoschka/operating-manual-for-spaceship-earth-by-buckminster-fuller-a-book-review
Fuller laments the fact that the Earth’s richest people are burning up planetary resources in a bonfire of short-term gain. Fuller uses the spaceship metaphor to suggest we are quickly burning through the millennia of fuel in our planetary tank.
Operating manual for spaceship fuller
The word is obviously not a popular word. Synergy is the only word in our language
that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any
of the system’s separate parts or any subassembly of the system’s parts.
Since synergy is the only word in our language meaning behavior of wholes unpredicted by
behavior of their parts, it is clear that society does not think there are behaviors of whole
systems unpredicted by their separate parts. This means that society’s formally-accredited
thoughts and ways of accrediting others are grossly inadequate in comprehending the
nonconceptual qualities of the scenario “universal evolution.”
synergetic-unpredicted by its separate parts. But the interplay of Sun as supply ship of Earth
and the Moon’s gravitationally produced tidal pulsations on Earth all interact to produce the
biosphere’s chemical conditions which permit but do not cause the regeneration of life on
Spaceship Earth. This is all synergetic. There is nothing about the gases given off respiratorily
by Earth’s green vegetation that predicts that those gases will be essential to the life support of
Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth
all mammals aboard Spaceship Earth, and nothing about the mammals that predicts that the
gases which they give off respiratorily are essential to the support of the vegetation aboard our
Spaceship Earth. Universe is synergetic. Life is synergetic.
This is partially the consequence of overspecialization
and of leaving the business of the whole to the old pirates to be visibly conducted
by their stooges, the feudal kings or local politicians.
Topology is the science of fundamental pattern and structural relationships of event
constellations. It was discovered and developed by the mathematician Euler. He discovered that
all patterns can be reduced to three prime conceptual characteristics: to lines; points where two
lines cross or the same line crosses itself; and areas, bound by lines. He found that there is a
constant relative abundance of these three fundamentally unique and no further reducible
aspects of all patterning
This reads: the number of points plus the number of areas always equals the number of
lines plus the number constant two. There are times when one area happens to coincide with
others. When the faces of polyhedra coincide illusionarily the congruently hidden faces must be
accounted arithmetically in formula.
Are humans necessary? Are
there experiential clues that human intellect has an integral function in regenerative universe as
has gravity? How can Earthians fulfill their function and thus avoid extinction as unfit?
Are humans necessary? Are
there experiential clues that human intellect has an integral function in regenerative universe as
has gravity? How can Earthians fulfill their function and thus avoid extinction as unfit?
What we now have demonstrated metaphysically is that every time man makes a new
experiment he always learns more. He cannot learn less. He may learn that what he thought
We find experimentally, regarding the metaphysical phenomenon, intellect, which we call
know-how, that every time we employ and test our intellectual know-how by experimental
rearrangement of physical energy interactions (either associated as mass or disassociated as
radiation, free energy) we always learn more.
Now we have carefully examined and experimented with the two basic constituents
of wealth-the physical and the metaphysical.
Thus, because the instruction manual was missing we are learning how we safely can
anticipate the consequences of an increasing number of alternative ways of extending our
satisfactory survival and growth-both physical and metaphysical.
Man has failed thus far, as a specialist, to define the microcosmic limits of divisibility of the
nucleus of the atom, but, epochally, as accomplished by Einstein, has been able to define
successfully the physical universe but not the metaphysical universe; nor has he, as yet, defined
total universe itself as combining both the physical and metaphysical.
Each experience begins and ends-ergo, is finite. Because our apprehending is packaged,
both physically and metaphysically, into time increments of alternate awakeness and asleepness
as well as into separate finite conceptions such as the discrete energy quanta and the atomic
nucleus components of the fundamental physical discontinuity, all experiences are finite.
Physical experiments have found no solids, no continuous surfaces or lines only discontinuous
constellations of individual events. An aggregate of finites is finite. Therefore, universe as
experientially defined, including both the physical and metaphysical, is finite.
Since synergy is the only word in our language meaning behavior of wholes unpredicted by
behavior of their parts, it is clear that society does not think there are behaviors of whole
systems unpredicted by their separate parts.
There is nothing about an electron alone that forecasts the proton, nor is there anything about
the Earth or the Moon that forecasts the co-existence of the Sun. The solar system is
synergetic-unpredicted by its separate parts. But the interplay of Sun as supply ship of Earth
and the Moon’s gravitationally produced tidal pulsations on Earth all interact to produce the
biosphere’s chemical conditions which permit but do not cause the regeneration of life on
Spaceship Earth. This is all synergetic. There is nothing about the gases given off respiratorily
by Earth’s green vegetation that predicts that those gases will be essential to the life support of
Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth
all mammals aboard Spaceship Earth, and nothing about the mammals that predicts that the
gases which they give off respiratorily are essential to the support of the vegetation aboard our
Spaceship Earth. Universe is synergetic. Life is synergetic.
