I must confess that until today, I knew almost nothing about Buckminster Fuller.
I briefly read about him months ago while trying to figure out what Unitarian theology was about. I learned that he was some sort of genial modern polymath - à la Benjamin Franklin - who could, to those familiar with Jungian typology, easily epitomize the "extraverted intuition + introverted thinking" type. I imagined him as a man who needed to understand everything with a rational approach while being guided by an internal compass pointing to a certain universalism. He was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, philosopher and visionary. [*] The rest, I discovered today thanks to my lunch meal.
I had to prepare my meal early this morning before going to work since I do not have the opportunity to leave for lunch. Going through an Ayurvedic cooking phase, I've been experimenting with Indian recipes which inevitably include clarified butter: ghee. I have been amazed preparation after preparation by the richness in taste and texture it provides and the way it releases the aroma of spices. Today's meal included ghee and quickly after eating, I felt that the ghee itself was somehow responsible for an unusual sense of calm across my body. Curious to learn about the presumed benefits of the elixir, I searched for information online and stumbled upon an article written by a fellow called Peter Malakoff. After finishing the article - and being converted to the use of ghee forever :) - the author intrigued me, and so wanting to learn more about him, I visited his website where I read his biography.
It turns out this man's life is nothing short of incredible! For the sake of comparison, I would say it is what Into the Wild's Chris McCandless's life could have been had he lived earlier, but just a little crazier. To return to the subject of this post, Peter Malakoff after writing a paper was granted a scholarship to spend a month with Buckminster Fuller. This is how the meal lead to learning about the man!
"That night Bucky spoke of the world of sailing and the world as seen by a man at sea. Indeed, much of Fullers terminology, the very words he used and the principles they represented, came from the nautical world. Think of the famous term he coined- 'Spaceship Earth'. He likened the world to a ship, which, he pointed out, is a closed and limited environment, not an unlimited one and always in motion. He pointed out how important it was to grasp and understand this.
He told us of many years ago he had spoken to a group of architects in New York City and had asked the assembled group if any of them knew how much the huge, many storied building they were sitting in weighed. None of them had any idea. Fuller found this to be a major oversight and a serious fault on their part. How could they maximize the potential that could come from building materials and structures if they were not thinking 'ecologically', if they did not know what the building weighed? How could they build something in accord with the operating principles of life, of spaceship earth?
Fuller, who had captained many a boat, said that 'On a ship, one always had to know how much weight was to be carried. It was important to know this if the ship was to be able to perform well on the water. It was this 'closed' or limited environment, similar to the nature of the world as a ship, that gave rise to the very concept of ecology. The very word 'ecos' comes from the Greek word for house or home. Ecology', he said, 'begins with the recognition of the closed or limited environment of the world. It is born of the realization that you cannot just dump your trash or waste into a river or an ocean and that it will just be washed away. We are on a ship, a spaceship and absolutely everything is and needs to be recycled, we need to know how much things 'weigh' and how they 'work'.
He spoke about 'cybernetics' which Bucky defined as the 'science of self-regulating mechanisms'. (Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the 'cyborg' or the self regulating organism. Think of 'cyberspace' as self regulating space). Bucky said that the word, cybernos, comes from the Greek word for the 'helmsman' of a boat. Bucky then made a startling statement, "A drunk cybernos makes less mistakes than a sober cybernos". I asked him how that could be . . . I didn't want to be in a boat or a car driven or steered by a drunk. He shook his head in agreement. I felt completely lost. Then he made his point, "Unless you make a mistake, you do not correct your course. Because a drunk does not make so many mistakes, he does less correction of his course and so his course is mistaken, he weaves his way down the road, or he hits something with deadly results. A sober man is constantly correcting his many little mistakes before they get big and his course is thereby true"
He spoke of 'synergetics', what Fuller called the behavior of a whole system not predicated on the behavior of its parts. He told us of chrome-nickel steel and how its strength is over 50% greater than the sum of the strength of its component metals. He spoke of gravity and how there was nothing in all the stuff of the universe that would predict it would be mutually attracted to another thing.
He spoke of the principle of 'precession'. Bucky told us how precession is the relationship that occurs between objects that are in motion. 'Imagine a top', he said. 'When it is set spinning, if you push it, it will go at right angles to the direction of your push. This is the same as the earth spinning around the sun. The suns greater gravitational attraction would pull the earth directly into itself, but since the earth is spinning it goes in a great elliptical circle around the sun'. Fuller said that the principle of precession is how life 'works'- A honeybee goes to a flower in pursuit of honey. The bee only wants the honey, but at right angles to the intention or drive of the bee, flowers are pollinated. The honeybee is not concerned with pollinating flowers. Bucky proposed that 'life happens at right angles or in a precessional manner to the 180degree straight ahead intentions of the bee'. He went on to say that it was exactly the same with a human seeking money or sex or pleasure or power. Life is happening at right angles to our desires. By recognition of this, he said, we can begin to design our lives to take into account precession and thus work with the nature of nature.
Finally, I remember that Bucky spoke of the word 'trimtab', what it was and what it represented. Fuller told us of how a large boat like the Queen Mary has a very large, many tonned rudder at the the very back of the ship. At the back end of that very large rudder is a very small rudder. When the captain wants to turn the huge main rudder in one direction, he turns the small rudder in the opposite direction. This creates a difference of water pressure or lower pressure vacuum on one side of the large rudder and the main rudder can now be moved with almost no effort; It is literally 'drawn' in that direction. Bucky said this represented the power of the individual to change the direction of the 'ship of state', doing what government and corporations cannot, by applying design science, by doing the 'right' intelligent action. Further, he pointed out how the action of the trimtab is applied when the bulk of the ship has passed, when it seems to have gone past the point of any change. Fuller died in 1983 and the epitaph carved on his tombstone says: "Call me Trimtab""
Concepts like these are precisely what drew me to physics - a chance to increase the focus of my metaphysical observation lens. Knowledge of natural phenomena should give general epistemic tools by the improvement of intuition. Ideas like precession and the trimtab are very poetic and reveal the richness scientific knowledge can bring to philosophy. Many of his ideas may not be new today, but were visionary then.
No comments:
Post a Comment