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Abstract

Synergetic geometry is the product of a mind as comfortable with mathematical precision as with the intuitive leaps associated with visual and spatial conceptualizing. Buckminster Fuller was guided predominantly by intuition throughout his 87 years; nonetheless, he was entirely at ease with the painstaking exactitude of numerical calculation—such as that required in the development of the geodesic dome in the early 1940s. Years before the pocket calculator, he produced volumes of intricate trigonometric solutions, manipulating eight-digit numbers with the patience and precision of a monk. However, the peculiar language of Fuller’s mathematical writings quickly betrays the intuitive influence and all but conceals that of the hard-nosed engineer. Buckminster Fuller was both the pragmatic Yankee mechanic and the enigmatic mystic, and synergetics is the product of that combination.

See Notes, pp. 289ff.