Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Fuller, R. Buckminster

ISBN 10: 0671207830 / ISBN 13: 9780671207830

Published by Simon & Schuster, 1969

About this Item

Clarion; Small 8vo 7½" - 8" tall; 143 pages.

Seller Inventory # 25624

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication Date: 1969
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671207830
• ISBN 13: 9780671207830
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fine+

About this title

Synopsis

In this essay on man Mr. Fuller expresses what may well be his penultimate view of the human condition. Here, in a mood at once philosophical and involved, Mr. Fuller traces manā s intellectual evolution and weighs his capability for survival on this magnificent craft, this Spaceship Earth, this superbly designed sphere of almost negligible dimension in the great vastness of space.

Ā

Mr. Fuller is optimistic that man will survive and, through research and development and increased industrialization, generate wealth so rapidly that he can do very great things. But, he notes, there must be an enormous educational task successfully accomplished right now to convert manā s tenĀ­dency toward oblivion into a realization of his potential, to a universe-exploring advantage from this Spaceship Earth.

Ā

It has been noted that Mr. Fuller spins ideas in clusters, and clusters of his ideas generate still other clusters. The concept “spaceship earthā is Mr. Fullerā s, and though used by Barbara Ward as the title of a work of her own the idea was acknowledged by her there as deriving from Mr. Fuller. The brilliant syntheses of some fundamental Fuller principles given here makes of this book a microcosm of the Fuller system.

About the Author

R.   Buckminster Fuller has been a Research Professor at Southern Illinois University since 1959. In 1968 the Board of Trustees appointed him University Professor, the second faculty member so honored in the University’s history.