I found Synergetics in the local library when I was in high school, was duly impressed by Arthur C. Clarke’s endorsement on the cover, but didn’t understand much at all about the book. I was too young to tell if the book was obvious math crankery or not back then, but the magnum opus style of Synergetics combined with it being pretty completely ignored nowadays makes it look a lot like an earlier example of the type of book Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science turned out to be.
Still, I’m curious about what the big idea was supposed to be and what did people who seriously read the book thought about it.
Did anyone here read Buckminster Fullers synergetics? And if so did understand it?
Hefty quantities of Synergetics seem incomprehensible to me.
Fuller was trying to make himself into a mystical science guru—and Synergetics laid out his domain.
There is some worthwhile material in there—though you might be better of with more recent secondary sources.
But which sources. The reading of his that I understood I found amazing. And i can imagine that grasping synergistic might be useful for my brain.
Recommendations for reading are always welcome.
It depends on what aspect you are interested in.
For example, I found this book pretty worthwhile:
“Light Structures—Structures of Light: The Art and Engineering of Tensile Architecture” Illustrated by the Work of Horst Berger.
...and here’s one of my links pages: http://pleatedstructures.com/links/
Seconding this question.
I found Synergetics in the local library when I was in high school, was duly impressed by Arthur C. Clarke’s endorsement on the cover, but didn’t understand much at all about the book. I was too young to tell if the book was obvious math crankery or not back then, but the magnum opus style of Synergetics combined with it being pretty completely ignored nowadays makes it look a lot like an earlier example of the type of book Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science turned out to be.
Still, I’m curious about what the big idea was supposed to be and what did people who seriously read the book thought about it.
ETA: For the curious, the whole book available is online.