12 Degrees of Freedom
We have more options than we think
"The discovery that once a closed system is recognized as exclusively valid, the list of variables and the degrees of freedom are closed and limited to six positive and six negative alternatives of action for each local transformation event in Universe."

(Bucky Fuller Synergetics 251.46)
 

"Fuller was the first designer in history to understand a structure as pattern comprised entirely of energy and information."


[Fuller Themselves. Far From Equilibrium. Sanford Kwinter, ed.]

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As much as anything else, freedom is a state of mind. This site is inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller's discoveries of the physical and metaphysical integrities of Universe. Bucky had the courage to seek and speak the Truth about the wondrous beauty and bounty of Spaceship Earth, the incredible potential each individual possesses to affect change that can make the world work for everyone and the transformative power of synergy -- coordinated/combined actions leading to the creation systems with life support capacities that are orders of magnitude greater than the sum of each individual contribution.

Bucky developed an approach to problem solving he called Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science that is based on Nature's "minimum inventory/maximum diversity" strategy for achieving the greatest degree of life support with the least expenditure of energy.  This concept is key to achieving social and economic justice for everyone on Earth while maintaining - even improving -  overall planetary ecological integrity.

"Evolution" Bucky reminded us, "is bound and determined to make humanity a success." He was convinced that collectively the human species possesses the know-how and resources to support all of humanity for generations to come at higher standards of living and individual freedom than any humans have thus far experienced without endangering or undermining the ecological integrity of Earth.

He also knew that this can not be achieved without fundamental changes in how we relate to one another and to the planet. In other words, nothing short of a revolution. His hope was that we would opt for the bloodless variety:

"The world teeters on the threshold of revolution." he warned. "If it is a bloody revolution, it is all over. The alternative is a design science revolution." Design science is capable of producing so much life support per unit of resource invested as to take care of all human needs in harmony with natural systems.

I began posting a blog under this title in August 2006. We need to adopt a comprehensive anticipatory planning and design approach to dealing with the world's pressing problems as quickly as possible. This website is designed to share my personal experiences with Bucky-inspired whole systems thinking and problem solving in hopes of contributing to that process. It is a work very much in progress - driven by a deep sense of urgency.

"Everything I Know"
The Buckminster Fuller Archive
Internet Archive
During the last two weeks of January 1975 Buckminster Fuller gave an extraordinary series of lectures concerning his entire life's work. These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours and examine in depth all of Fuller's major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics. Autobiographical in parts, Fuller recounts his own personal history in the context of the history of science and industrialization. The stories behind his Dymaxion car, geodesic domes, World Game and integration of science and humanism are lucidly communicated with continuous reference to his synergetic geometry. Permeating the entire series is his unique comprehensive design approach to solving the problems of the world. Some of the topics Fuller covered in this wide ranging discourse include: architecture, design, philosophy, education, mathematics, geometry, cartography, economics, history, structure, industry, housing and engineering.

"Fuller saw the world economic system, earlier and more explicitly than anyone else as itself a mega-alloy of gigantic proportions and complexity, sweating properties left and right, a geometric modulus of existing and possible performances determined only by the particular phase in which it is at any moment caught."


[Fuller Themselves. Far From Equilibrium. Sanford Kwinter, ed.]
Recommended
Sites
Buckminster Fuller Institute
Ocean Arks International
Remineralize The Earth
Bioneers