Editing Buckminster Fuller (section)

== Philosophy ==

Buckminster Fuller was a [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]], and, like his grandfather [[Arthur Buckminster Fuller]] (brother of [[Margaret Fuller]]),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/arthurbuckminsterfuller.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061019224827/http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/arthurbuckminsterfuller.html |archive-date=October 19, 2006 |title=Arthur Buckminster Fuller }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/buckminster-fuller-3/ |title=Buckminster Fuller: Designer of a New World, 1895-1983 |work=Harvard Square Library |year=2016 |access-date=January 11, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130806065007/http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/fuller.html |archive-date=August 6, 2013}}</ref>  a Unitarian minister. Fuller was also an early [[environmental activist]], aware of Earth's finite resources, and promoted a principle he termed "[[ephemeralization]]", which, according to futurist and Fuller disciple [[Stewart Brand]], was defined as "doing more with less".<ref>{{cite book |last=Brand |first=Stewart |title=The Clock of the Long Now |location=New York |publisher=Basic |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-465-04512-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/clockoflongnow00bran }}</ref> Resources and waste from crude, inefficient products could be recycled into making more valuable products, thus increasing the efficiency of the entire process. Fuller also coined the word [[Synergetics (Fuller)|synergetics]], a catch-all term used broadly for communicating experiences using geometric concepts, and more specifically, the empirical study of systems in transformation; his focus was on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components.

Fuller was a pioneer in thinking globally and explored [[Energy conversion efficiency|energy]] and [[material efficiency]] in the fields of architecture, engineering, and design.<ref>{{cite book |last=Fuller |first=R. Buckminster |title=Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth |location=Carbondale, IL |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |year=1969 |isbn=978-0-8093-2461-3|title-link=Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Fuller |first1=R. Buckminster |last2=Applewhite|first2= E. J. |title=Synergetics |url=https://archive.org/details/synergeticsexplo00full |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Macmillan |year=1975 |isbn=978-0-02-541870-7}}</ref> In his book ''Critical Path'' (1981) he cited the opinion of François de Chadenèdes<ref>François de Chadenèdes (November 18, 1920 - October 24, 1999) - His name in full was Jean Auguste François de Bournai Barthelemy de Chadenèdes. A petroleum geologist and priest, he was born in Flushing, New York. After graduating from Harvard College in 1943, he received an M.S. degree from Harvard University in 1947 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1951. He worked in the petroleum industry for the next thirty years, retiring in 1981. He was a member of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists. As a geologist, he was active in California, Colorado, Mexico, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming, and he worked with other geologists in Bali, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Moscow. He is credited with helping discover oil in the Moxa Arch area of Wyoming and the Overthrust Belt of western Wyoming and Utah. He served as an advisor to President Richard Nixon's Environmental Quality Council (renamed the Cabinet Committee on the Environment), and, starting in 1975, he was a consultant to R. Buckminster Fuller on world energy. He contributed articles to many journals and books. In 1991, he was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church, and he served as assistant and associate rector at Saint John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado. He was a resident of Boulder for many years.</ref> (1920–1999) that petroleum, from the standpoint of its replacement cost in our current energy "budget" (essentially, the net incoming [[solar energy|solar flux]]), had cost nature "over a million dollars" per U.S. gallon ($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 actual earnings.<ref>{{cite book |last=Fuller |first=R. Buckminster |pages=xxxiv–xxxv |title=Critical Path |url=https://archive.org/details/criticalpath00full |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |year=1981 |isbn=978-0-312-17488-0 |no-pp=true}}</ref> An encapsulation quotation of his views might best be summed up as: "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance."<ref>{{cite web |first=Phil |last=Ament |url=http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/fuller.htm |title=Inventor R. Buckminster Fuller |publisher=Ideafinder.com |access-date=October 28, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYtQ_-rpAUo | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211107/hYtQ_-rpAUo| archive-date=November 7, 2021 | url-status=live|title=Buckminster Fuller World Game Synergy Anticapatory |publisher=YouTube |date=January 27, 2007 |access-date=October 28, 2012}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/159 |title=The Debates |newspaper=The Economist}}</ref>

Though Fuller was concerned about [[sustainability]] and human survival under the existing socioeconomic system, he remained 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" caused him to conclude that at a certain time during the 1970s, humanity had attained an unprecedented state. He was convinced that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth, had attained a critical level, such that competition for necessities had become unnecessary. Cooperation had become the optimum survival strategy. He declared: "selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable&nbsp;... War is obsolete."<ref>{{cite book |last= Fuller |first= R. Buckminster |pages= xxv |chapter= Introduction |title= Critical Path |chapter-url= https://archive.org/details/criticalpath00full |chapter-url-access= registration |edition= 1st |year= 1981 |location= New York, N.Y. |publisher= St.Martin's Press |isbn= 978-0-312-17488-0 |quote= "It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable as mandated by survival. War is obsolete. |no-pp= true}}</ref> He criticized previous utopian schemes as too exclusive and thought this was a major source of their failure. To work, he felt that a utopia needed to include everyone.<ref>{{cite book|title=Utopia or oblivion: the prospects for humanity|last=Fuller|first=R. Buckminster|editor-first=Jaime|editor-last=Snyder|publisher=Lars Müller Publishers|year=2008|location=Baden, Switzerland|isbn=978-3-03778-127-2|url=https://archive.org/details/utopiaoroblivion00rbuc}}</ref>

Fuller was influenced by [[Alfred Korzybski]]'s idea of [[general semantics]]. In the 1950s, Fuller attended seminars and workshops organized by the [[Institute of General Semantics]], and he delivered the annual [[Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture]] in 1955.<ref>{{cite web|title=Notable Individuals Influenced by General Semantics|url=http://www.generalsemantics.org/the-general-semantics-learning-center/overview-of-general-semantics/notable-individuals/|publisher=The Institute of General Semantics|access-date=April 18, 2014|archive-date=March 19, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140319195937/http://www.generalsemantics.org/the-general-semantics-learning-center/overview-of-general-semantics/notable-individuals/|url-status=dead}}</ref>  Korzybski is mentioned in the Introduction of his book ''[[Synergetics (Fuller)|Synergetics]]''. The two shared a remarkable amount of similarity in their general semantics formulations.<ref>{{cite web|last=Drake|first=Harold L.|title=The General Semantics and Science Fiction of Robert Heinlein and A. E. Van Vogt|url=http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/articles/gsb/gsb41-drake.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.generalsemantics.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/articles/gsb/gsb41-drake.pdf |archive-date=October 9, 2022 |url-status=live|work=General Semantics Bulletin 41|publisher=Institute of General Semantics|page=144|quote=For his dissertation showing some relationships between formulations of Alfred Korzybski and Buckminster Fuller, plus documenting meetings and associations of the two gentlemen, he was given the 1973 Irving J. Lee Award in General Semantics offered by the International Society for General Semantics.}}</ref>

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."

Fuller wrote that the universe's natural [[analytic geometry]] was based on tetrahedra arrays. 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. One confirming result was that the strongest possible homogeneous [[truss]] is cyclically tetrahedral.<ref>Edmondson, Amy, "A Fuller Explanation", Birkhauser, Boston, 1987, p19 tetrahedra, p110 octet truss</ref>

He had become a [[guru]] of the design, architecture, and "alternative" communities, such as [[Drop City]], the community of experimental artists to whom he awarded the 1966 "Dymaxion Award" for "poetically economic" domed living structures.