Philosophical Imaginatrix: Beautifully Brilliant Buckminster Fuller

Life is the spirit incarnate in time.

                                              -Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller is one of the most unknown visionary and inventor from the 20th Century. Though unknown, he is easily one of the most important person in the modern history. Fuller is not limited to a field or scope, he expands beyond ideas to find solutions to the global problems and crisis. His ideas are revolutionary. Fuller published more than 30 books in his lifetime. He popularized and used the ideas such as 'Ephemeralization', 'Synergetic' and 'Spaceship Earth'. He is also known for his invention of 'Geodesic Dome'. Fuller basically is a polymath who cannot be defined by few terms. 

Fuller believed that world can be a better place not just for a fraction of population, but for everyone in this planet. Fuller is a beautiful example of using tragedies for transformation. Fuller had started a construction company with his father in law, which did not work out because of financial difficulties. And went out of business. In the same time his daughter Alexandra died. This pushed Fuller to a point of suicide. But rather than giving in to those tragic impulses, he set on a journey to change the world. After which he started developing the 'design science', which he is known for. 

Gaining an insight to what he wants to do, Fuller invented the 'Dymaxion House'. Dymaxion is a combination of words dynamic, maximum and tension. The Dymaxion House was an hexagonal house which was made under the principle of sustainability using the materials from the aircraft industry. He also designed the 'Dymaxion Car'. A three wheeled streamlined vehicle. A test driver died during a test drive, which led investors to desert the concept. Both 'Dymaxion House and the Car' failed to gain commercial success. But Fuller did gain a widespread popularity. He was known for his unconventional style of thinking. He could challenge the conventional routines and standards and stimulate a process of thinking in people. Fuller continued working on his 'Dymaxion Designs'. 

In the meantime, Fuller also started researching on ways to revolutionize industrialization and energy use in global scale. He developed the 'Dymaxion World Map'. The Dymaxion Map is a projection of a world map in a shape of icosahedron. It can be flattened and unfolded into two dimension. The most important contribution of Fuller are:

1. Geodesic Dome 

2. Synergetics 

3. Dymaxion World 

4. World Game 

The Geodesic Dome is a spherical structure based on geodesics networks on the spherical surface. Fuller believed that the world will face a housing crisis and to solve that problem he designed the 'dome'. A house that could adopt the ways of planet. The shape of 'Geodesic Dome' is one of the most efficient shape found in the nature. The house is earthquake resistant, and it almost five times stronger than rectangular houses. The Geodesic Dome has boundless possibilities for us to discover. 

The Synergetics simply is a system/process of a wholesome holistic thinking. Fuller explains that synergetics involves geometric modeling and exploring the relationship between the thinker and the experience. To understand and learn from how 'Nature' acts as the universe, how it synchronizes itself and how it finds the patterns. Synergetics is a philosophy of problem solving. Its a philosophy of design that has application in all the layers of human endeavours. According to Fuller-

Synergy means behavior of integral, aggregate, whole systems unpredicted by behaviors of any of their components or subassemblies of their components taken separately from the whole.

In simple Synergetics is the geometrical observation of the way we think. And it looks for details of both the microcosm and macrocosm of reality and reactions. Fuller uses geometric logics to look into human experiences. He is set on a journey into the four dimensional Universe, where he encounters the topics such as relativity, entropy and what not to make our existence understandable and clear. And importantly these subjects must be involving rather than the domain of the elite thinkers. Fuller himself says, "Dare to be naive". Being naive is okay, and we must start from where we are to travel the dimensions of knowledge possible. Synergetics is a bizarre study of the bizarreness of life. 

Synergetics is infectious. It infects you. And it has no cure. 

Dymaxion world is the world of the dymaxion products. The dymaxion house, the dymaxion car, the dymaxion map, dymaxion bathroom and dymaxion deployment units. All of these products have the philosophy of sustainability, efficiency and best use of resources. They are founded in the principle of use less for more. The World Game is the short form of  'world peace game' or 'great logistics game'. The game is used for comprehensive, design science and anticipatory approach for solving the problems of the world. The Dymaxion Map is used in the game for plotting resources, scenarios and trends around the world. Our planet is a 'Spaceship Earth' with more than 200 admirals representing various countries. The game looks into the mechanism of this 'Spaceship Earth'. 

Fuller used to say:

“Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

Fuller was fascinated in documenting his life. He was obsessive about recording everything that occurred in his life. From 1917 to 1983, he recorded everything that happened to him in something called 'Dymaxion Chronofile'. The Dymaxion Chronofile is a huge scrapbook which includes the copies of Fuller's correspondence, newspaper clipping about him, his sketches and notes, and to a extent his bills. The chronofile is a 270 linear feet of continuous documentation. Why did Fuller create the Dymaxion Chronofile. Fuller explains-

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.

What is Fuller's 'Spaceship Earth'?

Spaceship Earth is a holistic view. Fuller explains we must look at the planet like a spaceship which has very limited resources. We have to act like a crew and work harmoniously. And we as a crew work for the greater good of humanity. Fuller in the book 'Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth' explains-

Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. . . . Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship. 

Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

Fuller has an extensive and extraordinary vision about life. We might agree or disagree with his philosophy and ideas. But we cannot deny the fact that he is a larger than life person. Rarely we come to know about someone with such vastness, beauty and passion. 

Some of beautiful sayings from Fuller:

1. There will come a time when the proper education of children, by a glorified system of spontaneous education of choice, similar to the Montessori System, will be made possible. Children, as well as grown-ups, in their individual, glorified, drudgery-proof homes of Labrador, the tropics, the Orient, or where you will, to which they can pass with pleasure and expedition by means of ever-improving transportation, will be able to tune in their television and radio to the moving picture lecture of, let us say, President Lowell of Harvard; the professor of Mathematics of Oxford; of the doctor of Indian antiquities of Delhi, etc. Education by choice, with its marvelous motivating psychology of desire for truth, will make life ever cleaner and happier, more rhythmical and artistic.

2. There's a major pattern of energy in universe wherein the very large events, earthquakes, and so forth, occur in any one area of universe very much less frequently than do the small energy events. Around the Earth insects occur more often than do earthquakes. In the patterning of total evolutionary events, there comes a time, once in a while, amongst the myriad of low energy events, when a large energy event transpires and is so disturbing that with their general adaptability lost, the ultra-specialized creatures perish.

3. 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.

4. The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is linear. This opens up a very high order of generalizations of generalizations. The truth could not be more omni-important, although it is often manifestly operative only as a linear identification of a special-case experience on a specialized subject.

5. We’re not just dealing in willingness. Humanity has to qualify to survive. You have to have some confidence. We’re all born naked, with no external equipment and no experience. Therefore we’re terribly ignorant. We’re hungry and thirsty, driven to find food by trial and error. So we’re designed to live by trial and error. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Study your mistakes; admit them, study them, and be terribly excited about them too. If this isn’t true, what is true?