saved
Everything I Know, Section 4
gist
Pattern integrity outlasts the cells and buildings that host it: rebuilt Dartmouth Hall and Fuller's eyeglasses were more "him" than his replaced flesh. Precession, the effect of bodies in motion on other bodies in motion, is the least sensed but most normal ecology of Universe. Water peoples learned tension catching compression under twenty-four-hour sea loads that land customs never required. In 1927 Fuller left earning a living to commit himself to design science that would make man a success.
ideas
- Pattern outlasts the host. Rebuilt Dartmouth Hall and unchanged eyeglasses showed identity as pattern integrity, not as the same wood or cells.
- Precession is the missing sense. Children know rotation, orbit, and torque; they do not feel that every action also moves the earth.
- Tension catches compression at sea. A ship is a beam between waves; water peoples had to differentiate tension and compression as land builders never did.
- Land and water make different sciences. Sea life is twenty-four-hour anticipatory design; land life can shutter the cottage after eight hours.
- 1927 turned living into design science. Fuller peeled off from earning a living to do what nature is trying to do: make man a success with more-with-less.
quotes
“I said Dartmouth hall had burned down, so we obviously weren’t in the same building”
“precession seemed to me by far the least sensed.”
“the ship going very rapidly, differentiating into pure tension and pure compression.”
“trying to make man a success instead of trying to earn a living.”