Synergetics 2: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

R. Buckminster Fuller had a wide-ranging, yet logical, imagination that produced everything from architecture to automobiles to poetry and philosophy. He worked as a consultant with NASA for the moon landing and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served as a professor at universities across the country. But what his actual school of thought was can be incredibly difficult to pin down, not least because he tended to invent his own nomenclature to describe it. Towards the end of his long life he published a two-volume work in which he attempted to explain and sum it all up (with the help of E. J. Applewhite) called "Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking." The first volume came out in 1975. This, "Synergetics 2," was released in 1979. (Even within the copy itself, it seems to have two different subtitles: "Further Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking" appears on the dust jacket but the original subtitle—sans "Further"—appears on the title page.) As it took more than eighty years of experiments and free-ranging thought, and more than a thousand pages of text, to reach this point, we can't sum up what "Synergetics" is about in a couple of sentences, but here’s a starting point: Fuller saw spatial complexity and geometry as the key to all systems and their transformation. That means no component acts in isolation. And by "all systems," Fuller meant ALL systems, not simply the obviously mechanical ones. He included environmental forces, social dynamics, and on and on. He saw the tetrahedron as the simplest model of a system, and then expanded from there. Does it make sense? A lot of serious people thought so, to some degree or another. Read it for yourself to see what you think. Our copy is a first edition, first printing. It is in fine condition, with the only concession to its age being some slight fading along the top edge of the front cover. It is profusely illustrated throughout, mostly in black and white drawings, but with sections of colored prints at the front and the back, along with an appendix of tables. It is bound in dark maroon cloth, with Fuller’s signature stamped in gold at the bottom of the front cover. On the spine the title and Fuller’s name are stamped in gold but have the look of a dark red label edged in gold, while the publisher’s name is stamped in gold in much smaller type at the bottom of the spine. Our copy does NOT have a dust jacket but does not show the wear that might be expected from missing that protection. The pages are in excellent condition, and the binding is firm and tight. Photos are forthcoming or immediately available upon request.…