What I Have Learned
What I Have Learned
A collection of twenty autobiographical essays by great contemporaries from the "Saturday Review"
R. Buckminster Fuller
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ISBN: 978-000000000-0
ISBN-10: 0
Updated: 2024-12-16
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Copyright Holder.
ENCODED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED
A collection of twenty autobiographical essays by great contemporaries from the “Saturday Review”
A SATURDAY REVIEW BOOK
SIMON AND SCHUSTER
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
| Adventures in Ideas and Learning | |
| i Augustine Cardinal Bea | |
| Paths to Ecumenism | |
| n Danilo Dolci | |
| Tools for a New World | |
| in Constantin A. Doxiadis | |
| Learning How to Learn | |
| iv Ilya Ehrenburg | |
| A Last Memoir | |
| v Dwight D. Eisenhower | |
| What I Have Learned | |
| vi Richard Buckminster Fuller | |
| How Little I Know | |
| vn James M. Gavin | |
| Military Power: The Limits of Persuasion | |
| vhi Harry Golden | |
| How to Live with a Chair You Hate | |
| ix Eric Hoffer | |
| A Strategy for the War with Nature | |
| x Robert Maynard Hutchins | |
| First Glimpses of a New World |
xi Horace Meyer Kallen
How I Bet My Life 189
xn Salvador de Madariaga
The Dangerous Lure of Panotland 202
xm Robert Moses
Confessions of a Reformed Reformer 218
- Reinhold Niebuhr
Some Things I Have Learned 233
- Alan Paton
The Challenge of Fear 250
- Chakravarti Rajagopalachari
What Man Cannot Know 261
xvh Sir Herbert Read
What Ever Happened to the Great Simplicities? 270 xvm Josef Hans Thirring
Can a Scientist Be an Optimist? 283
- Warren Weaver
Confessions of a Scientist-Humanist 298
- John F. Wharton
Does Anyone Know Reality? 310
¶ Preface
NORMAN COUSINS
Adventures in Ideas and Learning
The idea for the series in “What I Have Learned” came from four short lines in The Practical Cogitator, edited by Charles Curtis and Ferris Greenslet. Originally published in 1945 and reissued in 1962, the Cogitator is one of the most compact, varied, and satisfying intellectual and literary feasts to appear in this country in the post-World War II years. The four sentences came from Charles Beard in response to a query by George Counts, now eminent professor at the University of Southern Illinois School of Education, once a professor of my own when I was a student at Columbia Teachers College: “How long would it take you to tell all you have learned from your lifetime’s study of history?” Dr. Beard felt the great lessons of history could be summed up in just four lines:
-
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
-
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.
-
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
-
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Each of these sentences, of course, opens out on a universe of human thought and experience. Each seems enigmatic or paradoxical; all represent a challenge to the individual mind—not just to see fully into and beyond the separate statements but to relate them to personal experience.
Over the years, we have found Professor Beard’s apothegms a most useful way of getting people to talk about themselves. There is a vivid recollection, for example, of a philosophical conversation with Jawaharlal Nehru in 1953. We were seated on the broad lawn in back of the prime minister’s house in New Delhi. He was at the height of his popularity as leader of India’s four hundred million newly independent people. Nehru relished reflective conversation and often complained that politics and contemplation didn’t go well together. He said he regretted being so busy doing things he didn’t have time to look into the meaning of them. Yet each man had the obligation, he supposed, to scrutinize his life and to ask whether it was teaching him anything—a paraphrase of Socrates’ famous observation that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Nehru was just as much at home with the ideas of the ancient Greeks as he was with Eastern thought. He said he wondered how many people could penetrate their own experience in order to locate the essential lessons.
We mentioned Professor Beard’s brief philosophical distillations. They delighted Nehru. Then we asked him how he would respond to the challenge put to Professor Beard by Professor Counts. He sat back in his lawn chair and slowly sniffed a tiny rose. Then he said: “I have often wondered whether I have learned anything at all in my life, really. It is possible the most important lessons are stored in the subconscious and that we act on them without identifying the source or even knowing they are there.
“One lesson I know I can identify. The teacher was Gandhiji. He taught me—he taught us all—the importance of making the means consistent with the ends. If you had worthwhile goals but pursued violent or evil means, the goals would change for the worse. Politicians are not philosophers—though I agree with Plato it would be nice if this were so. Anyway, it is somewhat out of tradition for a politician to make the means consistent with the ends. Few things are more typical of politics than the ease with which it degenerates into violence. Yet I have learned that it is worth trying to keep good ends from being diminished by poor means. Trying helpsat least a little.
“The second lesson I think I may have learned,” he continued, “is that there is no natural conflict or contradiction between free will and determinism. Life is both. Life is like a game of cards. You have no control over the hand that is dealt you. The hand corresponds to determinism. The way you play the cards corresponds to free will. So I think I have perhaps learned it is better to make the most of what you are than to exhaust yourself in lamentation because you are not someone else.”
Nehru’s emphasis on the dominance of moral lessons over the practical ones was also clear in Albert Schweitzer’s reaction to Beard’s miniaturized formulations.
“All my life I have been asking myself not just what I have learned but what civilization has learned,” Schweitzer said in our last conversation at the hospital in Lambar6n£. “And I have come to feel that the greatest discoveries have to do with ethics. Man is still in search of an ethic which alone can give his life true meaning and beauty. For me, the greatest ethic is life-and-world affirmation. If we can develop true reverence for all life, we may be able to understand it. We cannot manifest it or be part of it without reverence. This, I think, is what I have most of all learned. There is also the need to understand the reality of the existence of God inside each man and to know how to make that inner kingdom manifest.”
It is against this background that the “What I Have Learned” series was conceived and planned. Our hope had been that Nehru and Schweitzer would contribute to the series. Nehru said, characteristically, that he would only embarrass himself by revealing how little he had learned after all, but said he would try to find time to contribute. During the next year, he wrote us three long letters detailing his preoccupation with India’s problems and world issues. Schweitzer, also characteristically, sent long handwritten letters, apologizing for the quality of the penmanship (he said he had inherited his arthritic fingers) and telling of his world concerns.
Though neither Nehru nor Schweitzer is represented in the “What I Have Learned” series or the book, their place in the development of the idea must be acknowledged. Their responses, as well as the original brief quotations from Charles Beard, were highly pertinent and useful in describing the project to possible contributors and in setting the stage for the book.
This volume of “What I Have Learned” consists of twenty essays. Publication of the book, however, will not mark the end of the series in SR. The editors intend to continue publishing the essays so long as reader interest in the series is sustained. It is possible that additional volumes may be brought together. All this, however, is for the future. Meanwhile, the editors hope the book will serve as a reminder that man can still preside over his experience. The perception of a better future must not be confined to soothsayers or astrologers. The proper assessors of human hopes are those who can comprehend the connection between cause and effect and who can extract governing principles from the multiplicity of events and forces. The learning experience is still the precarious and vital one.
The human race may not be able to generate as much conceptual thought as it can use, but it would be disastrous not to use as much as it has. Fortunately, thought does not have to be quantified—not even in an age obsessed with numbers. Even to promote respect for thought adds to the basic energy and quality of civilization.
Norman Cousins
¶ How Little I Know
RICHARD BUCKMINSTER FULLER
“Tell mein five thousand
Written words”—
(Equivalent, at my oral rate,
To three-quarters of an hour’s discourse) “What you have learned—
In your lifetime,”
Said Norman Cousins.
“That ought to be easy” said I.
Three weeks have gone by—
I recall that Thirty-eight years ago I invented a routine Somewhat similar to Muscle development Accomplished through A day-by-day lifting Of progressively heavier weights.
But my new
Intellectual routine
Dealt with the weightless process Of human thought development Which subject is Known to scholars As epistemology.
And I have learned
That such words as Epistemology Stop most of humanity From pursuing
Such important considerations As the development Of the thought processes.
So my new discipline Was invented for dealing Even with the ephemeral Which word means
Conceptual but weightlessAs is for instance
The concept of circularity.
My new strategy required That on successive days
I ask myself
A progressively larger
And more inclusive question Which must be answered Only in the terms of Experience.
Hearsaids, beliefs, axioms,
Superstitions, guesses, opinions Were and are
All excluded
As answer resources
For playing my particular Intellectual development game.
However, when lacking Any possible experience clues I saw that it was ineffectual To attempt to answer Such questions as for instance “Why I?”
Or
“Why . . .
Anything?”
And because it was my experience That some individuals Proved as persistently faithful In reporting their experiences to me As were my own senses The rules of my game permitted My inclusion of such individuals’ Directly reported experiences In my inventory of experiences For use in my progressively Great and greater Self-questioned answering.
In playing that game I soon came
To what I assumed to be both
The largest askable and
The largest answerable
Question:
“What do you mean,”
I asked myself,
“By the word
Universe?
If you can’t answer
In terms of
Direct experience
You must desist
From the further use
Of the word UNIVERSE
For, to you
It will have become
Meaningless!”
The twentieth century physicists, In defining the physical universe
As consisting only of energy,
Deliberately excluded the metaphysical universeBecause the metaphysical
Consists only of imponderables,
Whereas the physical scientists Deal only with ponderablesWherefore their physical universe Excluded for instance
All our thoughts,—
Because thoughts are weightless—
But thoughts are experiences—
Wherefore I saw
That to be adequate
To the intuitively formulated
And experience-founded controls
Of my ever bigger
Question and answer routine,
My answering definition
Of UNIVERSE
Must be one which
Embraced the combined
Metaphysical and physical Components of UNIVERSE.
Thus my self-formulating answer emerged, And has persisted unshattered
By any subsequent challenges
From myself or others
As:
“By universe I mean:
The aggregate of all humanity’s
Consciously apprehended
And communicated
(To self or others)
Experiences.”
And later I discovered that
Eddington had said “Science is:
The conscientious attempt
To set in order
The facts of Experience.”
And I also discovered
That Ernst Mach—
The great Viennese physicist, Whose name is used
To designate flight velocity
In speed of sound increments, Known as Mach numbersSaid:
“Physics is:
Experience
Arranged in
Most economical order.”
So I realized that
Both Eddington and Mach
Were seeking to put in order
The same “raw materials”—
I.e. Experiences—
With which to identify
Their special subsystems Of UNIVERSE.
Wherefore I realized that
All the words in all dictionaries
Are the consequent tools
Of all men’s conscious
And conscientious attempts
To communicate
All their experiences—
Which is of course
To communicate
Universe.
There are forty-three thousand cunent words In the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
We don’t know who invented them!
What an enormous, anonymous inheritance!
Shakespeare used ten thousand of them With which to formulate
His complete “works.”
It would take many more volumes Than Shakespeare’s to employ The forty-three thousandLogically and cogently.
In a five thousand word article
I would probably have use for Only one thousand.
Are forty-two thousand Of these words
Superficial and extraneous In reporting on
What I have learned?
I have learned that
You would think so
If you ever saw a magazine’s Space rewrite editor At work on my work!
“What’s stopping you?” said Norman “I’m not stoppingI’ve never started.
I can’t find the self starter
Or, more truthfully,
The self starter can’t find me
Oh—there it goes”
Womb daysWomb daysDear old tummy tomb days—
I can’t consciously recall Those busy elementary assembly days But post-graduate activity in Experimental biology By me and you (one and two) Which surprisingly produced Wee thee (we three) And more (four) Suggests to us
That our subconscious reflexing Can never forget
The satisfactory routines of our 273 Undergraduate days.
Probably no billionaire Out here in the air “Ever had it so good.”
It is understood
That if you know that I know How to say it “correctly” (The exact meaning of which I have not yet learned) Then I am entitled to say it All incorrectly
Which once in a rare while Will make you laugh. And I love you so much Whenever you laugh.
But I haven’t learned yet What love may be But I love to love And love being loved And that is a whole lot Of unlearnedness.
I haven’t learnt yet What laughter is But a mother told me How surprised was she When an undergraduate first Belly laughed in her Alma mater Dormitory.
I haven’t learned
How or why
Universe contrived to implode And intellectually code The myriadly unique Chromosomically orchestrated DNA-RNA,
Quadripartite moleculed, Binary paired, Helically extended
And unzippingly dichotomied Regenerative symphonic Jazz, as
A one and two, Three and four Me You,
Thee they
And more Thine and mine, Sweet citizen.
********
THYMINE-CYTOSINE GUANINE-ADENINE
********
That tetracouplet
Won the Nobel prize
The Wilkins, Crick and Watson Waltz
And that GC-TA jazz
All synced into
The non-simultaneous aggregate Of complex frequency integrated, Multi-degrees of freedom permitted, Individualized sequences,
Of experience evolutions,
Which we wave-modulatingly identify, In the subconsciously formulated, Tongue and lips shaped, Omni-directionally propagated,
Air wave patterning—
Sound
WORLD
—Whirled into the world Of positive and negative Of—
| MALE | and | FEMALE |
| Singular | and | Plural |
| Discontinuous | and | Continuous (has ovaries) |
| Compression | and | Tension |
| Hunter | and | Consolidator |
| Differentiator | and | Integrator |
O
I
I n
live
evil
evllution
devil
and Out
and 1 O v e
and e v O 1
and evOlution
and 1 O v e d
The Devil lived But never loved Which is lonelyL one only As are all Self Isolations
So let’s withdraw From exclusivity, Into world music WhereAs yet dancing to The DNA waltzI am now seventy years, or Approximately 600,000 hours old.
I have slept away 200,000 of those hours. While another 200,000Which is half of
My 400,000 awake hours—
Have gone into routine work which has been Prescribed, imposed or induced by other menSuch as being “educated,” earning a living, Paying taxes, obtaining licenses, Answering telephones and questionnaires.
And another 100,000—
Half of the remaining 200,000 awake hoursHave gone also into routine work
But this time prescribed
In the by-laws of membership
In the non-simultaneous invention Universe—
As one of its impressively independent, Variable functions—
A human member.
Each such member is
A metabolically regenerative
Ninety-nine per cent automated, Individually unique,
Abstract, pattern integrity system, Whose input-output energy involvement And control capability
Must continually expand, extend, relay, rebuild And maintain, as “operative,”
An interior-exterior, bi-partite tool complex Beginning with an integrally centralized organic set Which is subsequently extended into
An extra-corporeally decentralized organic set.
Both of which interior and exterior sets consist of Progressively interchangeable and intertransformable Chemical, hydraulic, pneumatic, Electro-magnetic, thermodynamic, Molecular and anatomical, Structural patterning processes.
All of which complex Regenerative processes
Are compounded as a unitary, Invisibly minute, Abstract pattern marriage operation, Inaugurating a new individual life Which like a telephone message Has some of the thoughts of both parties Yet weighs nothing in itself But makes its compounded Pattern self known
By a complex pattern of orderly and local Physical environment displacements, Which—as the circular wave Emanating in any liquid Such as water, milk or kerosene, From the impact of an object Dropped in the liquidGrows or expands regeneratively.
But as with the circularly expanding Weightless wave emanation There occurs also at outset A momentary displacement exchange As a centralized splash-back Dissipated against gravity To balance the local accounts.
And thus there is propagated An abstract and weightless Horizontally flowing Wave impulse pattern integrity Which though visibly apprehended By its succession of local displacements Does not consist of an horizontally moving
And ever increasing aggregate Of water molecules.
There is another experiment
Which discloses the pattern integrity Which can be demonstrated By taking three different Pieces of rope of equal diameter One of manila
One of nylon
One of cotton
And making a beautiful running splice Of one end of the manila rope Into the end of the nylon rope
And the other end of the manila rope Into the end of the cotton rope.
Next we make a simple back loop knot In the end of the cotton rope And slide it along the cotton rope Until it slides along over the splice Into the manila rope and along the manila Until it slides past the splice Onto the nylon And makes it clear
That the knot is neither
Cotton, manila, nor nylon But a pattern integrity Made visible to us
By its temporary local displacement Of the electro-magnetic frequencies Visible to us as colors
Within the frequency range Tuneable by our human optic system.
Neither water nor rope
“Went” anywhere
Only the weightless pattern integrity Moved from here to there.
So too does the complex wave package Of human being pattern integrity Begin to compound and Expand regeneratively
The local environment’s chemical association And disassociation events;
Continually shunting more
And more chemical event patterns Into its local disturbanceLike a tornado gaining twist, Power and visible presence on Earth By inhibiting ever Greater quantities of Local-ly available dust, fibers, Water droplets and larger objectsUntil the new human being Nine months later emerges From its mother’s womb As a seven-pound, placid Pink tornado.
And this tomato tinted tornado—meSwollen 24 fold to approximately 160 poundsEach day takes in and compoundingly processes Approximately three pounds of foods, Six pounds of water and Sixty-four pounds of air—
From which it extracts six pounds of oxygen:—
Amounting at my seventy years To a cumulative total
Of approximately 1,000 tons—
The weight of one United States Navy’s World War Two destroyer, Or 300,000 fold my arrival weight.
But the thousand tons Is in effect the weight Of a seventy years long Thirty-six inch girthed “rope” Twisted of imaginary strands Of food, water and air molecules Drawn randomly from all around Earth, And twisted temporarily together.
Into the molecular rope A complex slip knot has been “tied” Which complex knot Is both internally and externally In the exact pattern Of the complex, pattern integrity:Me,—
Which has been slipped Along the rope By time.
And as the knot passed, The rope behind it Disintegrated and Its atoms dispersed And deployed into Other biosphere function pattemings.
Concurrently with “slipping” of corporeal “me” The extra-corporeally decentralized Originally integral functions of “me” Are externalized into a complex of tools Averaging ten tons of steel, Twenty-nine tons of concrete Plus one mixed ton
Of all the other metals
Per each industrialized man.
And man’s tool extensions
Process universe energies, Occurring only external to man, and Provide each 1965
North American type industrialized human With 200, 24 hour serving, energy slaves; Each slave being capable
Of doing as much physical work as A human can do;
But at a ten millionfold
Finer degree of precision;
While working tirelessly Under conditions of heat
And cold which would destroy man.
All of this combined internal and external Metabolically regenerative man package Arrives without any instruction manual Covering either its own operation
Or that of the non-simultaneous Universe Within which man must function As an independent variable.
But the human package
Of integral and deployed tooling Has fortunately
The built-in subconscious capability Of self-discovery which in turn Has discovered its conscious ability To discover experimentally and progressively The ability to formulate concepts and words And thereby to relay to other contemporaries, And to subsequent generations of man, The apprehended data and Comprehended principles Apparently governing Some of the Operations Of Universe
Including man.
Of my remaining 100,000 hours 60,000 have been used
In getting from here to there;
And that has left me
A bonus of 40,000 hours
Or 6% per cent of my life’s total hours To invest at compound interest In whatever way the “Conscious” I
Wishes.
It is hard therefore to explain Why conscious I
Should have behaved so perversely As to have concentrated on producing Explosives equivalent in destructive capability To fourteen tons of T.N.T.
Per each and every human on Earth.
And how perverse I have been Is only to be comprehended When it is realized
That the 14 tons per capita Of self annihilating explosives Represent an energy harvest Which if properly cultivated Could have been made to support At high standard of living All human life on earth
For all the rest
Of this century
While thus providing the opportunity To invest the gained time
In providing for all Human generations to come.
I’m not inclined to use The word “Creativity” In respect to human beings, What is usually spoken of as creativity Is really a unique and unprecedented Human employment of principles Which exist a priori in the universe.
I think man is a very extra-ordinary Part of the universe
For he demonstrates unique capability In the discovery and intellectual identification Of the operative principles of universe —Which though unconsciously employed Have not been hitherto differentiated, Isolated out and understood
As being principles, By other biological species.
Rejecting the word “creativity”
For use by any other than The great intellectual integrity Progressively disclosed as conceiving Both comprehensively and anticipatorily The complex interpattemings
Of reciprocal and transformative freedoms In pure principle
Which apparently govern universe And constitute the verb god,
I go along with the 5,000 year old Philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita Which says “Action is the product Of the qualities inherent in nature. It is only the ignorant man, Who, misled by personal egotism, Says ‘I am the doer.’ ”
I am most impressed
With the earliest recorded philosophic statements By unknown individuals of India and China.
Through millenniums the philosophies Have become progressively
Compromised and complicated.
I am an explorer, however,
Of the generalized design science principles Which seemingly differentiate
Man from animal
And mind from brain.
The word “generalization”
As used in the literary sense, Means “a very broad statement.” It suggests covering too much territory —Too thinly to be sound.
The literary men say “This is too general.”
In the mathematical sense, The meaning of generalization Is quite different.
The mathematician or the physicist Looks for principles which are Persistently operative in nature, Which will hold true in every special case.
If you can find principles That hold true in every case, Then you have discovered What the scientist calls A generalized principle.
The conscious detection of
Generalized principles which hold true Under all conditions
And their abstraction from any and all Special case experiences of the principles —Is probably unique to humans.
By abstraction, I mean an idealized, “Empty set” statement
Such as, for instance, one of my own!,
—“Tension and compression are only coexistent” —E.g., when you tense a rope
Its girth contracts—ergo compresses. When you compress a sphere’s polar axis,
Its equatorial girth expands and tenses.
It is inconceivable that a dog
Tugging at its leash at one time
And, compressing its teeth
On a bone at another time,
Should formulate consciously
The generalized
“Only coexistence of tension and compression,”
Though the dog is subconsciously coordinate In tension-compression tactics.
To generalize further than
“Tension and compression are only coexistent,”
We may say that “plus and minus
Only coexist”
And generalize even further
By saying “Functions only coexist.”
Then there is an even more powerful
And intellectually more exalted stage
Of generalization of principles
And that is the generalization
Of a complex of generalizations
—Such as—unity is plural and at minimum two
—Which combines the generalized law
Of the coexistence only of functions
With the theory of number.
In turn we discover the generalizations
Governing the associative powers
Of the nucleus and of the weak interactions
For the unity is two
Of the congruent, convex and concave spheres
As evidenceable in the generalized laws
Disclosed conceptually, arithmetically, and geometrically In synergetics.
I am certain that what we speak of As human morality
Is a form of tentative generalization
Of principles underlying
Special case experiences of human potentials, Behaviors, actions, reactions and resultants. Man has also the unique ability
To employ generalized principles —Once recognized—
In a consciously selective variety Of special case interrelationships.
The whole regenerative process Of intellectual discovery
And specialized use of generalized principles Is known as teleology.
Teleology embraces
The theory of communication, Though as yet having special case limitations. It is an hypothetical
Approach to a pure, abstract generalization To say that teleology
Is only intuitively initiated by humans.
Intuition alerts brain
To first apprehend
And then recognize
Each special case experience
Within some minimum number Of special case recognitions.
Intuition alerts mind
To comprehend, and Formulate conceptually
The abstract generalization Of a principle recognized
As operative in all the special cases. Intuition alerts brain to
The objectively employable generalized principle In hitherto unexperienced special case Circumstances inexplicably remote From the earlier set of
Special case experiences within which
The generalized principles were first experienced Before their generalization Occurred in the mind.
Teleology—as part
Of communications theory Relates to the pursuit of truth As entropy and anti-entropy.
It may be that
Communications theory
May be mathematically equated With electrical
Transmission theory Whereby the higher The meaning or voltage The more efficient
And longer distance Communication attainable.
Based on experiments With any and all systems,
The second law of thermodynamics Predicts the inexorable energy loss Known as ENTROPY.
Because the escaping energy Does so diffusely, In all directions,
Entropy is also known Mathematically
As “The Law of Increase Of the Random Element.”
Before it had been discovered By rigorous experimentation That light has a velocity It was erroneously assumed To be “self-evident”
That light was instantaneousThat all stars in the sky Were “right there now” In exact geometrical pattern, Being seen instantaneously And simultaneously
By all who looked their way.
But since Michelson’s measurement Of light’s speed
We have learned that The light from the sun, Our nearest star, Takes eight minutes To reach us here on Earth. From our next nearest star Light takes two years
To reach our planet Earth.
And other stars Are so far away Their light takes millions
Of years and more To reach us.
Assuming instant-universe Classical Newtonian Science Also assumed that universe Must he an instant systemA simultaneous unit machine, In which every part Must be affecting Every other part, In varying degrees But in simultaneous unity. They assumed also that the Unit and simultaneous universe Must of course obey The great Second Law Of Thermodynamics Whose, inexorable, Entropic energy loss Required self-dissipation And ultimately utter Self-annihilation Of universe.
“Running down” they called it Wherever “down” may be.
Though light’s speed Of seven hundred million miles per hour Is fast
It isn’t anywhere nearly as fast As “instant”—
Which means reaching anywhere “In no time at all.”
Ergo, the Einsteinians Instituted experiments
To ascertain the behavioral characteristics Of a physical universe comprised Of only partially overlapping, Progressively intertransforming, Non-simultaneous, energy events.
The Einsteinian Era scientists’ experiments Showed that entropic energies Accomplished their disassociations here Only through associations there— That is by regroupings elsewhere.
Thus early twentieth-century scientists Found the intertransformative Energy quanta transactions,To be eventually,
But not always immediately,One hundred per cent accountable.
As a consequence of
The Einsteinians’ experiments The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’ Concept of a continually Self-dissipating universe
Had to be abandoned
And in its place was established The, experimentally required, Law of Conservation of Energy Which states that energy May be neither created nor lost; Ergo the energetic universe Is the minimum,
But non-simultaneously realized, Energy exchanging system, Which is to say That physical universe, As experimentally demonstrated Is the minimum and only Perpetual motion process, Which as an aggregate of finite, Dissimilar and non-simultaneous Energy events Is in itself Sum totally finite.
All the foregoing Dissipates the foundations Of the Newtonian world’s Cosmogony and economics Which assumed That a “running down world” Suggested the prudence Of saving, conserving and hoarding; And that those who spent Were fools who would perish As resources dwindled.
Though entropically irreversible Every action
Has its reaction and resultant, And every nuclear component Has its positive or negative Behavioral opposite Which is however Not its mirror image.
And the irreversible situations Give an evolutionary direction To otherwise stalemated Conditions of physical universe.
For instance it is discovered That wealth, whatever else it may be, Cannot alter an iota of yesterday And can alter only The present and forward Metabolic regeneration Conditions of humanity.
Song of the Dead And the QuickNewton was a noun And Einstein is a verb.
Einstein’s norm makes Newton’s norm INSTANT UNIVERSE, Absurd.
“A body persists In a state of rest Or—
Except as affected—” Thus grave stones are erected!
Non-simultaneous, physical universe Is Energy; and “Energy equals mass Times the second power Of the speed of light.” No exceptions!
Fission verified Einstein’s hypothesis—
Change is normal Thank you Albert!
Irreversible verse.
Einstein’s intellect
Defined energy as E = MC2 Energy cannot define intellect. Intellect the metaphysical Is comprehensive to Energy the physical.
While Universe is finite
Energy is definite Because definable.
Energy is XY.
Intellect is 0.
The wealth of Earthians
Is irreversible.
Wealth cannot alter yesterday’s experience.
It can only alter today’s and tomorrow’s experiences.
It can buy
Forward time in which intellect
May scientifically explore for The orderly interrelationships
Disclosed in yesterday’s experiences
Which can be employed by intellect
To forecast
Anticipatory and orderly rearrangements of tomorrow By technological transformations Of the physical energy environments, Events and circumstances.
Wealth is the organized and operative Tool and energy capability
To sustain man’s forward metabolic regeneration; To physically protect him;
To increase his knowledge
And degrees of freedom
While decreasing his interfrustrations.
Solo wealth is to commonwealth
As Xis toX4.
Wealth is: Energy compounded With intellect’s know-how.
Every time man uses his know-how His experience increases
And his intellectual advantage Automatically increases.
Because of its conservation Energy cannot decrease. Know-how can only increase. It is therefore scientifically clear That:—wealth which combines Energy and intellect
Can only increase, and that wealth can Increase only with use
And that wealth increases As fast as it is used.
The faster—the more!
Wealth is accountable as
The inanimate energies shunted Onto the ends of industrial levers Whose physical capability is Stateable in forward, automated, Man days of travel miles
With first class comprehensive services
Including food, lodging, clothing, Amusements, communication, information And medical services Based on the average physical experiences Of a top civil service rating’s World travel involvements.
Has man a function
In Universe?
In dynamical balance With the inside-outing, Expanding universe Of radiant stars, Man witnesses Radiantly dormant Earth as A collecting or outside-inning, Contracting phase, of universe. Earth receives and stores, A continually increasing inventory Of sun and star emanating radiation In its lethal-energy-concentrates Sifting, sorting and accumulating Spherical Van Allen belts.
In addition to the Van Allen belts The succession of Earth’s concentric Spherical mantles, e.g.,
The ionosphere, troposphere et al., Constitute an extraordinary series Of discrete filters for The random-to-orderly sorting, Shunting, partially accumulating
And final inwardly forwarding
Of the benign radiation residues
To the biosphere stage
Of Earth’s continual and orderly Processing of its discrete share Of the expanding universe propagated Energy income receipts.
Earth also receives daily
Additional thousands of tons
Of expanding Universe dispatched Stardust.
This concentration around Earth’s surface
Of the universe deposited dust Apparently consists of 91 of the 92 regeneratively patterning Chemical elements
In approximately the same systematic order Of relative abundance of those elements
As the relative abundance
Of those same elements
As they are found to occur In the thus far inventoried Reaches of universe.
The biological life on earth
Is inherently anti-entropic
For it negotiates the chemical sorting
Out of the Earth’s crust’s
Chemical element inventory
And rearranges the atoms In elegantly ordered
Molecular compound pattemings.
Of all the biological anti-entropics,
I.e., random-to-orderly arrangers, Man’s intellect is by much
The most active, exquisite and effective agent Thus far in evidence in universe.
Through intellect, man constantly succeeds In inventing technological means Of doing ever more orderly
I.e., more efficient,
“Better sorted-out,”
Local universe, energy tasks
With ever less units of investments
Of the (what maybe only apparently), “randomly” occurring
Resources of energy,
As atomic matter,
Or energy, as channeled electro-magnetics.
To guarantee
All of life’s
Anti-entropic functioning
The intellectual integrity universe,
That has designedly arranged the great game Has also arranged that mankind
Like all the other living species, Has its ultra-shortsighted, Built-in, “desire” drives,
Its romantic conception ambitions And protectively colored self deceits, As well as its longer distance “needs,” All of which cause each specie To pursue its particular “honey” With its particular rose-colored glasses, As does the bumblebee
Which at the same time
Inadvertently and unconsciously performs Myriads of other tasks, Designed with fabulous Scientific capability by nature, Which inadvertent in co-ordinate tasks Unknown to the separate creature species Are all essential to realization
Of the regenerative continuance Of the much larger
Survival support conditions For the generalized
Ecological system of “all life.”
It is part of
The comprehensively anticipating, Design science of life
That the bumblebee’s self-unviewed, Unwitting, bumbling tail
Bumps into and knocks off male pollen, Which it later
And again inadvertently,
Knocks off upon the female botanical organs, Thus unconsciously participating in A vastly complex ecological interaction Of the many energy processing Bio-chemical “gears” Of the total life system Dynamically constituted by All the living species.
The myriad inadvertencies Of all the living species Have sum totally provided
A metabolically sustaining
And regenerative topsoil process Which—it is realized now,
But only by
Our retrospectively gained knowledge—
Has kept man
Regeneratively alive on Earth
For at least two million years,
While ever improving
His physical survival advantages And increasing his longevity.
This vast “game playing” of life
Has also indirectly occasioned,
Not only the regenerative multiplication Of human beings,
But also a progressively increasing Percentage who survive in conditions
Of ever improving Physical advantage.
I think man is very properly concerned About that which he does not understand.
I don’t think that it is the machine per se That bothers man;
It is just not understanding
Anything
That disturbs him.
When an accident bares
Portions of human organs
Familiar only to doctors, Those organs look foreign And frightening to people.
Stick your tongue way out Before a mirror.
It is a strange looking device.
If existing originally and
Transcendentally as psyches only, Individuals had to choose,
And assemble their own sets
Of organic parts,
Having been assured of mortal incarnation And of mortal “honey chasing” experiences But only after successful selection And completion of the assemblyAnd were endowed—as psychesOnly with an aesthetic
Sense of selectivity,
Being devoid of any understanding Of either the separate or integrated Functions of those partsNo humans would merger
Those co-operatively functioning parts
Into Mortal beings
For no part of the “guts”
Would be chosen.
Nature had to skin over the regenerative Chemistry and physics controls, With an aesthetically intriguing, Pseudo-static, sculptural Baby doll unity In order to trick the immortal psyches Into the problem beset, Temporary occupation
Of such humid process regenerative machines As those of the humans.
I have learned
That man knows little
And thinks he knows a lot.
When any man can tell us
Just how and why he is handling and disposing The energies of his breakfast;
How he breaks down his chemical energy and To which glands is he routing
The diversified energies of his ham and eggs;
Or when any man can tell us
That he is deliberately
Pushing each of his million
Head hairs
Out through his scalp
At specifically preferred rates
And in specifically controlled shapes
For specific purposes
We may say that this man
Knows a little,
But I don’t know of any man
Who can tell me
So little even as
Why we have hair.
I am the most unlearned man I know.
I don’t know anyone
Who has learned
How little one knows
As have I.
But that does not belittle
The little I seem to know,
And I have confidence
In the importance of remembering
How little we know
And of the possible significance Of the fact that we prosper. And at some times even enjoy Life in Universe
Despite the designed in littleness That we have to “get by with.”
I like algebra
Positives more powerful than negatives
minus wins plus wins only by default plus wins
(+)x (-) = (-) (+)X (+) = (+) (-)X (-) = (+)
The game is overPlus wins two to one.
What the astronomers rank as
The nearest “bright” star to Earth
Is “Rigel Kent”
Which is three hundred thousand times Further away from Earth than is the Sun. It is easy to see a man
One third of a mile away and
We were surprised when young
To see a man
At that distance
Swinging a sledge
To drive a post into the ground
And to realize
That the sound of his maul
Hitting the post top
Registered in our brain As reported through our ears Four seconds later Than had the visual news Which “long since” had told us That he had once more Hit the post.
Through physical experiments Performed by our scientists We have learned that The highest known velocity Among physical phenomena Is the speed of light and all radiation Relayingly scanned by nerve lines To our brains’ television conceptualizing Through the optics of our eyes.
Because the speed of light Is approximately 186,000 miles per second, And the Moon is
About twice that distance Away from Earth.
If we had a large mirror on the Moon, And we flashed a powerful Light toward the Moon It would take four seconds For the light to be reflected back To our eyes.
That is, the light takes
Two seconds to get to the Moon And two more seconds To return to Earth.
And the overall four seconds lag
Of the visual report
Is the same time lag as that in
Our childhood realized lag
Of the sound report
Behind the visual report Of the post-sledging event.
Because the light coming to Earth
From the Moon
Takes two seconds to make the trip,
And because the light
Coming to Earth from the Sun
Takes eight and one-half minutes,
And because the light
Coming to us from Rigel Kent
Takes four and one-half years, We all see a live show
Taking place in the sky
Four and one-half
Years ago.
And as we gaze around
The starry heavens
We see right now
Live shows of “yesterdays”
Ranging from millions to sextillions of years ago, As we look at the stars
We see all of history
Now alive.
It took only two million years and
Four and one-half billion human babies
To establish a human survival beachhead
Aboard the little
Eight thousand mile diameter Spherical Spaceship EARTH. Whereby life could successfully realize Its highest known potential life span Possibly to continue indefinitely As one self-rejuvenating generation. Few of the stars we look at, Live starring out there, Are young enough To witness
Those first human events Taking place on Earth Only two millions of years ago.
Since all the vital parts Of human organisms Have now become interchangeable, And many of them
Have also become interchangeable With inanimate mechanical parts, And since human longevity Is continually increasing There is a good possibility That humanity is developing A continuous man
Who will persist in prime health And youthful vigor.
With the lessening of need To replenish the population, With fresh baby starts
The built-in drives to procreate Will lessen and be manifest in a proclivity Of females to camouflage as male And male to camouflage as female Thus suppressing the procreative urge By superficial antipathetic illusions, While permitting and promoting Procreatively innocuous sex companionships.
Despite their billionfold numbers Babies and very young children Soon after their arrival on Earth Have uttered and continue to utter Spontaneous comments and questionsConcerning life on Earth And in Universe—
Which are so economical
And uniquely fresh
In viewpoint and formulation
As to be pure poetry
Proving, apparently, that Poetry is inexhaustible;
To which their sophisticated
And surprised off-guard adult audience Cliche unpoetically “Oh how cute.”
In the year 1964
The one hundred largest Industrial giant corporations, Born and reared
In the United States of America
Invested four out of five
Of their new plant and equipment Expansion dollars
In production and service facilities
In world lands outside the U.S.A.
This trending to World identity only
Of the industrial giants
Held true also not only with thousands
Of lesser magnitude
U.S.A, and European bom
Limited liability industrial organizations
But also with the Communist countries’
Giant industrial organizations.
Wherefore world industrialization trends swiftly—
And altogether transcendentally
To man’s conscious planning—
Into an unitarily co-ordinate
World giant
With built-in automated,
Research fed,
Computer analyzed and selected,
Evolutionary self-improving
And self-transforming
Through altematingly regenerated
Competitive precessioning
Of all the variable functions
Of general systems theory.
TRUTH
I have learned that truth
Is an omni-present, omni-directional,
Evolutionary awareness,
One of whose myriadly multiplying facets Discloses that there are no “absolutes” —No “ends,” in themselves—no “things”
—Only transitionally transformative verbing.
It seems possible to me
That God may be recognizable
In man’s limited intellection
Only as the weightless passion drive
Which inspires our progressive searching For the—momentarily only—
And only most-truthful-thus-far-possibleComprehension of all the interconnections Of all experiences.
It seems then to me
That the nearer we come to understanding, The nearer we come to the
Orderly omni-interrelationships
Of all the weightless complex
Of all generalized principles
Which seem to be disclosed to us
As so important
As to be tentatively identified as God.
For it is the integratable interrelationships Of all the generalized laws
Which apparently govern
The great verb “universe”
Or the vastly greater
—Because comprehensively anticipatoryVerb intellecting
Which verb of optimum understanding Maybe “God.”
It seems that Truth
Is progressive approximation
In which the relative fraction
Of our spontaneously tolerated residual error Constantly diminishes.
This is a typical
Anti-entropy proclivity of man —Entropy being the law Of increase of the random element.
Heisenberg’s indeterminism, In which the act of measuring Always alters the measured, Would seem entropic were it not For the experimentally realized knowledge That the successive alterations Of the observed, Diminish
As both our tooling and instrumentation Continually improve;
Ergo intellection’s effect
Upon measurement and the measured Is a gap closing,
And the pursuit of more truthful comprehension Is successfully anti-entropic.
Before Heisenberg, T. S. Eliot said, “Examination of history alters history” And Ezra Pound,
And even earlier poets, Reported their discoveries That in one way or another The act of thinking alters thought itself.
When we ask ourself
“What have we learned?” We feel at first
That the answer is “nothing.”
But as soon as we say so We recall exceptions. For instance we have learned To test experimentally The axioms given to us
As “educational” springboards, and We have found
That most of the “springboards” Do not spring
And some never existed.
As for instance
Points, holes, Solids, surfaces, Straight lines, planes, “Instantaneous,” “simultaneous,” Things, nouns, “Congruence,” “at rest”
The words “artificial” and “failure” Are all meaningless.
For what they aver
Is experimentally “non-existent.” If nature permits a formulation It is natural.
If nature’s laws of behavior Do not permit the formulation The latter does not occur.
Whatever can be done
Is natural,
No matter how grotesque, boring, Unfamiliar or unprecedented. In the same way
Nature never “fails.”
Nature complies with her own laws.
Nature is the law.
When man lacks understanding
Of nature’s laws
And a man-contrived structure
Buckles unexpectedly,
It does not fail.
It only demonstrates that man
Did not understand
Nature’s laws and behaviors.
Nothing failed.
Man’s knowledge or estimating
Was inadequate.
Step to the blackboard.
Write out a number so lengthy It has never been written before.
The pattern of numbers
Constitutes a new form.
The number is a doodle.
And I cannot accredit novel form
As creativity of man.
The number of relationships between items
Is always N2 N
2
The relationships between four or more items
Are always greater in number
Than the number of items.
Ergo, there are always more chords than notes
And chords by themselves are not music.
It takes two to make a baby
But it takes God to make two.
God is twoing
God is threeing
God is multiplying
By dividing
The second law of thermodynamicsEntropy—is also as we have learned The law of increase of the Random Element I.e., every system looses energy—but Synergy means
Behavior of whole systems Unpredicted by
The behavior of their parts.
EN-ergy behaves entropically.
SYN-ergy behaves anti-entropically.
God is entropy
And God is also anti-entropy,
God is synergy
God is energy.
And God is always
A verb—
The verbing of Integrity.
I assume that the physical universe is definite And the metaphysical universe is finite. What men have called infinite
I call finite
And what men called finite
I call definite—i.e., definitive.
By my philosophy
The finite, but imponderable Metaphysical universe
Embraces the definite,
Ponderable, physical universe.
Finite is not conceptual.
Definite is conceptual.
I have mathematical proof
That the difference between the sums
Of all the angles around all the surface vertices
Of any conceptual, definitive physical system
And the finite but non-conceptual metaphysical universe
Is always 720°
Or a difference of only one
Definitive tetrahedron,
Therefore, the combined
Physical and metaphysical universe is finite.
You can’t buy anything worthwhile
Like spontaneous love or understanding.
Though metaphysically finite
These are imponderables.
The absolute would be
Non-transformable, static and weighable.
Ergo, experimentally meaningless.
Infinity is only local
And occurs within definite systems,
As for instance
Following a great circle
Around a sphere
Which because of the fact
That lines,—
Which occur experimentally
Only as energy vectors—
Cannot go through
The same point
At the same time—
Due to interference,
Which means also that lines
As curves
Cannot re-enter, or
“Join back into themselves,”
Therefore, the circling line
Can only wrap around
And over its earlier part—
As the knot-making
Sailor says it,
The circle when followed
Around and around
Results in a coil
Which is
An assymetric spiral,
Which may be followed experimentally Only as long as intellect follows.
Not being simultaneous
Universe cannot consist of one function.
Functions only co-exist.
Universe while finite is not definable.
I can define many of its parts
But I cannot define
The non-simultaneously occurring
Aggregate of experiences
Whose total set of relationships
Constitutes the whole universe
Though the latter as an aggregate of finites Is finite.
All the words
In all the dictionaries, as noted before, Represent all of humanity’s attempts To express Universe.
And while the dictionaries are finite
All the words
In all the dictionaries
Cannot be read simultaneously
And there is not one
Simultaneous sentence
Inherent and readable
In all the words.
In the same way
All the non-simultaneous experiences
May not be conceived
And expressed as
A simultaneous system.
Ergo, there is no thinkable and logical Simultaneous conception
Of non-simultaneous Universe.
There is strong awareness
That we have been overproducing
The army of rigorously disciplined
Scientific, game playing, academic specialists Who through hard work And suppressed imagination
Earn their Ph.D.’s
And automatic contracts
With prime contractors
At fifteen thousand dollars
Per year—and more—
Only to have their specialized field Become obsolete and by-passed in five years, By severely altered techniques, instruments And exploratory stratagems.
Despite their honor grades
They prove not to be
The Natural Philosophers
And scientist-artists, inferred by their Ph.D.’s
But just deluxe quality
Technicians or mechanics.
And a myriad
Of emergency committees—
Multiplying swiftly
From one or two
Emergency Committees
Appointed by the President,
Have altogether discovered
That what the
Ph.D. scientists lack—
To adapt themselves to change
Has been officially pronounced to be
“Creativity,”
But to my thinking
They lack the unique capability of mind—
Which is the ability not only to generalize
And to integrate a complex
Of pure generalizations
But also to project teleologically—
With fundamental understanding—
In any special case, direction.
Fundamental wisdom
Can readily identify any and all
Special case aspects within
The generalized whole When listening
Sensitively to one’s intuitions
By which alone
The generalized sub-subconscious integration
Of pattern cognition feed-backs
Are articulated.
Philip Morrison—Cornell’s Head
Of the Department of Nuclear PhysicsTalks about what he calls
“Left-hand” and “right-hand” sciences.
Right-hand science deals in all the proven Scientific formulas and experiments.
Left-hand science deals in
All of the as yet unknown or unprovenThat is: With all it is going to take
Intellectually, intuitively, speculatively, imaginatively And even mystically
By inspired persistence
To open up the as yet unknown.
The great scientists were great
Because they were the ones
Who dealt successfully with the unknown.
All the “great” were left-hand scientists.
Despite this historical patterning of the “greats”
We have government underwriting Only the right-hand science,
Making it bigger and sharper,
Rather than more inclusive and understanding!For how could Congress justify
Appropriations of billions for dreams?
So the billions went only For the swiftly obsoleting
Bigger, faster and more incisive
Modifications of yesterday’s certainties, By Ph.D. specialists
Guaranteed by the great Institutes of Technology To which the Congress Allocated the training funds As obviously “safe”
And exempt from political criticism;
Despite that scientific investigation Had shown beyond doubt That almost all of America’s
Top performance scientists Had been educated
In small, liberal arts colleges,
And that almost all
Of those top scientists Attributed their success
To their good fortune
In having studied intimately With a great inspiring teacher.
It would be considered
Political madness
To risk charges of corruption Through voting government funds To any individual
Especially to “Great inspiring teachers”“Crack-pot, longhairs!”
So it goes—
To Hell with the facts
When re-election
To political office is at stake.
Everything that constitutes science Is unteachable.
And we recall that
Eddington said: “Science
Is the earnest attempt
Of individual initiative
To set in order
The facts of experience.”
Scientific routines for specialized technicians And scientific formulas for their reference Alone are teachable.
Because we have been governmentally fostering Only right-hand science and Right-hand science to excess
The U.S.A. President’s science advisor
Instituted last year
A new direction of search
For sources of so-called “creativity.”
Financed by the National Academy of Sciences, He asked New York University’s Art Department To bring together a representative group of America’s leading art educators and artists.
It was felt by the National Academy
That the art educators—
As those who dealt with
Most of the almost drop-outs
Who had been switched into art
As a “last resort”—
Were probably intimate
With the type of emerging youth
Who were allowed to remain
In a freer state of mind
—In the world of art—
Than would they have been
If disciplined rigorously
In sharp specialization by the sciences.
That meeting, I thought fascinating
For it disclosed the artists as being
Individuals who develop powerful self-protection
Of their innate intellectual
And conceptual capability inheritance.
They often protect their innate capabilities Through intuitively triggered poker-faced silence Which in the elementary or high schools
Is interpreted as non-cooperative, mental inferiority, Often causing early termination
Of their formal education.
I think the consensus
Of the New York University meeting
Was that individuals
Of original conceptual brilliance
Were most frequently
Detected, protected, and made to grow By equally sensitive art teachers.
“Great teachers.”
Which agrees elegantly
With the statements
Of the proven scientists
Regarding their own experiences.
Congressional appropriations committees
Please take notice!
To see the whole world picture of science
As a part of a complete creative need—
As an artist’s need to articulate—
Kepes at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Made a beautiful demonstration.
He took hundreds of 8" X 10"
Black-and-white photographs
Of modern paintings and mixed them thoroughly Like shuffled cards
With photographs taken by scientists Through microscopes or telescopes Of all manner of natural phenomena Sound waves, chromosomes and such.
The only way you can classify
Photographs with nothing recognizable in them Is by your own spontaneous
Pattern classifications.
Group the mealy, the blotchy, the striped,
The swirly, the polka-dotted, and their sub-combinations.
The pattern classified groups
Of photographs were displayed.
The artists’ work and the scientists’
Were indistinguishable.
Checking the back-mounted data, it was found
That the artist had frequently conceived
His imagined pattern before
The scientist found it in nature.
Science began to take A new view of artists.
Loving mothers
Prohibit here and promote there—
Often in ways irrelevant or frustrating To brain-coordinated genetic evolution,
Often suppressing
A child’s profound contribution Trying to emerge.
We have to look on our society
As we look on the biological world in general Recognizing, for instance,
The extraordinary contributions
Of the fungi, the manures, the worms, et al.In the chemical reprocessingAnd fertility up-grading of the earth.
We must learn to think
Of the functions of the trees’ roots
As being of equal importance To the leaves’ functions.
We tend to applaud
Only the flower and the fruit
Just as we applaud only the football player
Who makes the touchdown
And not the lineman
Who opened the way.
What society applauds as “creative”
Is often isolated
Out of an extraordinary set
Of co-equal evolutionary events, Most of which are invisible.
Evolutionary “touch-downs” are unpredictableSometimes centuries apart.
Who knows which child is to make the next breakthrough? In the next decade society
Is going to be preoccupied with the child Because through the behavioral sciences And electrical exploration of the brain We find that given the right environment And thoughtful answers to its questions The child has everything it needs educationally Right from birth.
We have thought erroneously of education
As the mature wisdom
And over-brimming knowledge of the grownups
Injected by the discipline pump
Into the otherwise “empty” child’s head.
Sometimes parents say “don’t”
Because they want to protect the child
From getting into trouble.
At other times when they fail to say “no”
The child gets into trouble.
The child, frustrated, stops exploring.
It is possible to design environments
Within which the child will be
Neither frustrated nor hurt
Yet free to develop spontaneously and fully
Without trespassing on others.
I have learned to undertake
Reform of the environment
And not to try to reform man.
If we design the environment properly
It will permit child and man to develop safely
And to behave logically.
Order is achieved through—positive and negative
Magnitude and frequency controlled alteration
Of the successive steering angles.
We move by zig-zagging control
From one phase of physical universe evolution to another.
The rudder concept of social law is most apt.
The late Norbert Wiener chose the word cybernetics
Derived from Greek roots of “rudder”
Because Wiener, Shannon and others in communication theory
Were exploring human behaviors
And their brain-controlled “feed-back,” etc., As a basis for the design of computersAnd it became evident
That the human brain
Steers man through constant change.
No sharp cleavage is found
Which identifies the boundary between life and non-life Between the heretofore so-called “animate” and “inanimate.”
Viruses,
The smallest organized structures
Exhibiting “life”
May be classified either—
As inanimate or animate—
As crystalline or “cellular” forms.
This is the level also at which
The DNA/RNA genetic code is essentially A structural pattern integrity.
Such pattern integrities
Are strictly accountable
Only as mathematical principles
Pattern integrities are found
At all levels of structural organization in universe.
The DNA/RNA is a specialized case
Of the generalized principle of pattern integrity
Found throughout life and non-life.
All pattern integrity design
Is controlled by
Angle and frequency modulation.
The biological corpus
Is not strictly “animate” at any point.
Given that the “ordering”
Of the corpus design
Is accomplished through such codings as DNA/RNA Which are essentially angle and frequency modulation.
Then we may go on to suggest
That “life,” as we customarily define it Could be effected at a distancePrecession is the effect
Of one moving system Upon another.
Precession always produces
Angular changes of the movements Of the effected bodies and
At angles other than 180 degrees, That is, the results are never Continuance in a straight line.
Ergo all bodies of universe Are effecting the other bodies In varying degrees
And all the inter-gravitational effects Are precessional angular modulations And all the inter-radiation effects Are frequency modulations.
The gravitational and radiation effects Could modulate the DNA/RNA Angle and frequency instructions At astronomical remotenessLife could be “sent on.”
Within the order of evolution as usually drawn Life “occurred” as a series
Of fortuituous probabilities in the primeval sea.
It could have been sent or “radiated” there.
That is, the prime code
Or angle and frequency modulated signal Could have been transmitted
From a remote stellar location.
It seems more likely
(In view of the continuous rediscovery of man
As a fully organized being
Back to ever more remote periods)
That the inanimate structural pattern integrity,
Which we call human being,
Was a frequency modulation code message Beamed at earth from remote location.
Man as prime organizing
“Principle” construct
Was radiated here from the stars—
Not as primal cell, but as
A fully articulated high order being.
Possibly as the synergetic totality
Of all the gravitation
And radiation effects
Of all the stars
In our galaxy
And from all the adjacent galaxies
With some weak effects
And some strong effects
And from all time.
And pattern itself being weightless
The life integrities are apparently
Inherently immortal.
You and I
Are essential functions
Of universe
We are exquisite anti-entropy.
I’ll be seeing you!
Forever.
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Architect/engineer R. Buckminster Fuller first gained prominence in 1927 with the invention of the Dymaxion House, a spacious, low-cost, high-strength dwelling uniquely suspended from a central mast. In the early 1930s he introduced the three-wheeled Dymaxion car, which had a top speed of 120 miles an hour, went forty miles on a gallon of gasoline, and could turn in its own length. Of his many other inventions perhaps the most famous is his geodesic dome, whose design is based on a mathematical formula he himself developed and named “energetic synergetic geometry.” Born in Massachusetts in 1895, Mr. Fuller is a graduate of Harvard University and U.S. Naval Academy. He has founded several design and manufacturing firms and served as a consultant to industry, the U.S. Government, the Ford Foundation, and most recently to the government of Japan. He has been a visiting professor, lecturer, and critic abroad and on many American campuses, including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley. He now holds a professorship with life tenure at Southern Illinois University. His books include No More Second Hand God, Education Automation, and The Unfinished Epic of Industrialization.
¶ Index
Accounting.
See Economic accounting
Anticipatory design science, 22
Anti-entropy, 101–102 See also Entropy
Areas. See Topology
Astronauts: all humans as, 56
Atomic energy, 129.
See also Energy Automation: of human biological processes, 54; and loss of jobs, 124
Automobiles: ownership of, 134
Bank wealth, 89
Behavioral sciences: in educational process, 26
Brain: as coordinating switchboard, 25; difference between mind and, 101; imitated by computer, 118
British Empire and the great pirates, 37–38
Categoryitis, 31
Children: as comprehensivists, 25–26 Circle. See Great circle Comprehension: defined, 77 Comprehensivity of Great Pirates, 34–35; Great Pirates abandoning their, 50–51; man forced to reestablish, 53
Computers: provide new impersonal problem solutions, 45; as superspecialist, 53; strategy combined with general systems theory and synergetics, 93–94; as imitation of human brain, 118; beginning of, 122; resolving ideological
dogmas, 138
Craftsmen: early specialized, 29; tools of, 122; in the industrial economy, 123
Cross-breeding: of world man, 131
Cybernetics: defined, 95
Darwin, Charles: theory of animate evolution, 47
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 35–36
Democracy, 92–93
Design: capability of early world men, 28–29; of spaceship Earth’s internal support systems, 59–60; of universal evolution, 111–112; revolution in, 134
Design science: anticipatory, governing yesterday’s naval mastery, 22
Divide and conquer: grand strategy of, 39
, 69, 96. See also Energy
Economic accounting: by great pirates, 94–95; synergy in, 103; need for realistic, 112
Educational task: to allow physical and metaphysical success, 130
Einstein, Albert: formula , 45, 69, 96; definition of physical universe, 70; reassess universe, 97
Electromagnetic spectrum: great pirates’ first use of, 43–44; effecting human evolution, 110 Energy: impounding of sun’s radiant, 58, 59, 93; generalized law of, 73; savings as fossil fuels, 94, 129; in synergetics, 95; finite, 96; harnessing of, 129; atomic exploitation of, 129
Entropy: energy systems eventually run down, 46; assumed universe subject to, 96; wealth as antientropy, 101
Environment: early society inability to cope with, 26; evolution synergeticaily produced, 103–104; changes in physical, 110
Euler, Leonhard, 81
Evolution: success of human dependent on mastering metaphysical, 46; design and patterns in, 49, 54, 111–112; man’s feeling about, 53–54; inexorable, 55; our present position in, 65–66; effected by electromagnetic spectrum, 110; comprehending phases of, 127
Experiences: to extract generalized principles, 62; is finite, 70
Exploitation: of atomic energy, 129; of fossil fuels, 129. See also Energy
Extinction, 48
Failures: humanity’s, 24–25 Fellowships, 125
Forecasting, 22
Fossil fuel: energy savings account, 94, 128; expending of, 129. See also Energy
Generalized principles: minds discovering, 21; extracted from human experience, 61–62; first was leverage, 63; surviving with, 118; inventively employed only through mind, 127
Genera! systems theory: as tool of high intellectual advantage, 67, 70–71; combined with computer strategy and synergetics, 95
Geodesic lines, 76
GI Bill, 115
Gold: demand system inadequate, 88–98; used by Great Pirates for trading, 90
Grand strategy: divide and conquer, 39; organizing our, 65.
See also Strategy
Great circle: defined, 76
Great Pirates: as sea mastering people, 34; feared bright people, 35; use of logistics by, 37; and British Empire, 37–38; use of local strong man as king by, 39; tutoring of bright specialists by, 40; in world competition, 41, 43; becoming extinct, 44, 50; rules of accounting still used, 45
Gross national product: estimate for 1970, 108–109
Growth: physical and metaphysical, 61
“Have-nots” struggle with “haves” produces war, 87
“Haves”: struggle with “have-nots” produces war, 87
Heisenberg, Werner: principle of indeterminism, 72
Human beings, as astronauts, 56; will be free, 111; employing real wealth, 124; characteristics in Mexico, 132. See also Man
Humanity: exists in poverty, 23–24; on Earth’s surface, 27; extinction of, 49; place in evolution of, 66; function of, in universe, 83–84; and standard of living of, 102–103
Ideologies: political, 48; resolving dangerous dogmas of, 138
Indeterminism: Heisenberg’s principle of, 72
India: population problems in, 113 Industrialization: demonstration of world, 104
Industry: tooling of, 22, 116, 122, 133; production increased by world wars, 116; craftsmen in the economy, 123. See also Tools
Information: multiplies wealth, 104–105 Initiative, 45
Intellect: as humans’ supreme faculty, 60–61; frees man of special case superstition, 63; use of as man’s function in universe, 99
International Monetary Fund: 1967 deliberations of, 88
Invention, 134
Inventory: of variables in problem solving, 67–68
Jobs: loss of in automation, 124
King: as great pirate’s local strong man, 39, 40
Law of conservation of energy: defined, 98. See also Energy
Learning: always increases, 99; man’s past, 131; industrial retooling revolution, 133
Lesser circle: defined, 76
Leverage: first generalized principle, 63. See also Generalized principles
Life: as synergetic, 79–80; hypothetical development of support systems in, 107–108
Lincoln, Abraham, 45–46
Lines, 81. See also Topology
Machine: spaceship Earth as, 59–60 Macrocosm: as universe outside the system, 70
Malthus, Thomas, 47
Man: utterly helpless as newborn, 61;
as adaptable organism, 118–119.
See also Human beings
Mass production: and mass consumption, 123
Mathematics: improved by advent of zero, 36. See also Topology
Metals: not destroyed in war, 117 Metaphysical: initiative confused between religion and politics, 45; masters the physical, 46; experiences not included in physical universe, 68; defies “closed systems” analysis, 69; in synergetics, 95; need for, in educational task, 130
Mexico: human characteristics in, 132 Michelangelo, 35–36
Microcosm: universe inside the system, 70
Mind: comprehends general principles, 24, 127, 128; difference between brain and, 101; fellowships of, 125
Money: as bank wealth, 89.
See also Wealth
Moon gravity: as income wealth, 94 More-with-less: and generalized principles of, 63
Myth: of wealth as money, 114;
of population explosion, 136 Natural laws: and Great Pirates, 34.
See also Generalized principles Navies: and Great Pirates, 38 Negatives: yesterday’s, realized, 24 North America: early crossbreeding men in, 131
Photosynthesis: impounds sun’s energy, 59
Pirates. See Great Pirates
Planck, Max, 97
Planners: more comprehensive than other professions, 67
Points. See Topology
Politicians: local, asked to make world work, 51.
See also Ideologies
Pollution: as survival problem, 85 “Poluto”: as new name for planet, 85 Population: problems in India, 113;
explosion in as myth, 136 Poverty: humanity existing in, 23–24 Principles. See Generalized principles Problem solving: by yesterday’s
contrivings, 21
Resources: of Earth unevenly distributed, 29; no longer integratable, 52; unique materials made “on order,” 106
Revolution: design and invention, 134
Safety factor: in man’s evolution, 111–112
Schools: beginning of, 41.
See also Specialization; Strategy Second law of thermodynamics, 46 Senses: Great Pirates relying on, 43 Ships: logistics for production and maintenance, 37. See also Vessels
Slavery: of specialist expert, 41; human, 107
Sovereignties: claim on humans in, 37–38; categoryitis in, 31
Spaceship Earth: present condition of, 121
Specialist: computer as super, 53 Specialization: society operates on theory of, 25; early leaders who developed, 26, 30, 33; intellectual beginning of schools, 41–42; specialist as slave, 41; over causing extinction, 48, 49; scientific, applied toward weaponry, 52–53
Speed of light: discovery of, 97 Spending: regarding energy is obsolete, 98
Spoken word: as first industrial tool, 122
Strategy: secret and anticipatory, of Great Pirates, 35; comprehensive of naval war colleges, 37
Structures: industrial tool enclosing, 116–117
Students: comprehend elimination of war, 134
Sun: radiation as income wealth, 58, 94. See also Energy
Survival: physical and metaphysical, 61; potentials increased by intellect, 63
Sword: powerful men of, 26.
See also Great Pirates
Synergetics. See Synergy
Synergy: defined, 78, 95; defines universal evolution, 79; combined with computer strategy and general systems theory, 95; wealth develops interest through, 102; in economic accounting, 103; in humanity escaping from local identity, 106
System: universe as biggest, 68; thought is, 72; first subdivision of universe, 71, 83;
variables in evolution, 83
Technologies: as substitute after war, 117
Telford, Thomas: as Great Pirates’ specialist, 37
Thinking: long-distance future of, 22; in terms of whole, 67; as a system, 72; dismissal of irrelevancy in, 76–77; tackling problems with, 83; humans free to, 126.
See also Intellect; Mind
Time: as relative, 135
Tools: industrial, 116; externalizations of integral functions, 117; craft and industrial extinctions, 122; spoken word, 122
Topology: mathematics of comprehension, 77; discovered by Euler, 81; patterns of lines, points and areas, 80–81. See also Geodesic lines; Great circle; Lesser circle
Underlying order in randomness, 74–75 Universe: as biggest system, 68, 96; physical defined by scientists, 68–69, 70, 72, 97; subdivision, 71; generalized law of energy conservation in, 73; defined by synergy, 79; humanity’s function in, 83, 112
Van Allen belts, 58
Variables: inventorying of and
problem solving in, 67
Vectorial geometry: mathematics
of comprehension, 75–80
Vessels: use of, in venturing, 28
War: beginning of the great class, 47–48, 87; as age-old lethal formula of ignorant men, 52; as taking priority over real problems, 87; students comprehend elimination of, 134
Water: desalinization of, as problem solution, 85–86. Pollution
Wealth: generated by integrating resources, 29; as a safety factor, 61; defined, 88, 93; irreversible in evolutionary processes, 91; society’s real, 91, 94,124; income is sun radiation and moon gravity, 94; as anti-entropy, 101; can only increase, 101,105; common, of humanity, 105; of the U.S., 108; of know-how produced by GI Bill. 115
Weaponry: scientific specialization applied toward, 52
Wholes: thinking in terms of, 67; systems in synergy, 78. See also Systems
World: and first seafarers, 28; sea ventures thought in terms of, 30; asking local politicians to make it work, 51; defined, 104, 119; veterans returning from World War II, 115; increase industrial production in, 115–116; cross-breeding in, 131-132