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Synergetics (Fuller)
Synergetics is the empirical study of systems in transformation, with an emphasis on whole system behaviors unpredicted by the behavior of any components in isolation. R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) named and pioneered the field. His two-volume work ''Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking'', in collaboration with E. J. Applewhite, distills a lifetime of research into book form. Since systems are identifiable at every scale, synergetics is necessarily interdisciplinary, embracing a broad range of scientific and philosophical topics, especially in the area of geometry, wherein the tetrahedron features as Fuller's model of the simplest system. Despite mainstream endorsements such as the prologue by Arthur Loeb, and positive dust cover blurbs by U Thant and Arthur C. Clarke, along with the posthumous naming of the carbon allotrope "buckminsterfullerene", synergetics remains an off-beat subject, ignored for decades by most traditional curricula and academic dep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Empirical
Empirical evidence is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. It is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the terms ''evidence'' and ''empirical'' are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which '' confirms'' or ''disconfirms'' scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, evidence must be public and uncontroversial, like observable physical objects or events and unlike private mental states, so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Geodesic Dome
A geodesic dome is a hemispherical thin-shell structure (lattice-shell) based on a geodesic polyhedron. The rigid triangular elements of the dome distribute stress throughout the structure, making geodesic domes able to withstand very heavy loads for their size. History The first geodesic dome was designed after World War I by Walther Bauersfeld, chief engineer of Carl Zeiss Jena, an optical company, for a planetarium to house his planetarium projector. An initial, small dome was patented and constructed by the firm of Dykerhoff and Wydmann on the roof of the Carl Zeiss Werke in Jena, Germany. A larger dome, called "The Wonder of Jena", opened to the public on July 18, 1926. Twenty years later, Buckminster Fuller coined the term "geodesic" from field experiments with artist Kenneth Snelson at Black Mountain College in 1948 and 1949. Although Fuller was not the original inventor, he is credited with the U.S. popularization of the idea for which he received on 29 J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Dymaxion House
The Dymaxion house was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques. Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times—all of them factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended to be suitable for any site or environment and to use resources efficiently. A key design consideration was ease of shipment and assembly. As he did when naming many of his inventions, Fuller combined the words dynamic, maximum, and tension to arrive at the term ''Dymaxion''. History The Dymaxion house was completed in 1930 after two years of development, and redesigned in 1945. Buckminster Fuller wanted to mass-produce a bathroom and a house. His first "Dymaxion" design was based on the design of a grain bin. During World War II, the U.S. Army commissioned Fuller to send these housing units to the Persian Gulf. In 1945, science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein placed an order for o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Cloud Nine (tensegrity Sphere)
Cloud Nine is the name Buckminster Fuller gave to his proposed airborne habitats created from giant geodesic spheres, which might be made to levitate by slightly heating the air inside above the ambient temperature. Geodesic spheres become stronger (and relative to the volume enclosed, lighter) as they become bigger, because of how they distribute stress over their surfaces. As a sphere gets bigger, the volume it encloses grows much faster than the mass of the enclosing structure itself. Fuller suggested that the mass of a mile-wide geodesic sphere would be negligible compared to the mass of the air trapped within it. He suggested that if the air inside such a sphere were heated even by one degree higher than the ambient temperature of its surroundings, the sphere could become airborne. He calculated that such a balloon could lift a considerable mass, and hence that 'mini-cities' or airborne towns of thousands of people could be built in this way. A Cloud Nine could be tether ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Entropy And Life
Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume ''A Letter to American Teachers of History'' proposing a theory of history based on the second law of thermodynamics and on the principle of entropy. The 1944 book '' What is Life?'' by Nobel-laureate physicist Erwin Schrödinger stimulated further research in the field. In his book, Schrödinger originally stated that life feeds on negative entropy, or negentropy as it is sometimes called, but in a later edition corrected himself in response to complaints and stated that the true source is free energy. More recent work has restricted the discussion to Gibbs free energy because biological processes on Earth normally occur at a constant temperature and pressure, such as in the atmosphere or at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
System
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is expressed in its functioning. Systems are the subjects of study of systems theory and other systems sciences. Systems have several common properties and characteristics, including structure, function(s), behavior and interconnectivity. Etymology The term ''system'' comes from the Latin word ''systēma'', in turn from Greek language, Greek ''systēma'': "whole concept made of several parts or members, system", literary "composition"."σύστημα" , Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek–English Lexicon'', on Pers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Synergy
Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts (i.e., a non-linear addition of force, energy, or effect). The term ''synergy'' comes from the Attic Greek word συνεργία ' from ', , meaning "working together". Synergy is similar in concept to emergence. History The words ''synergy'' and ''synergetic'' have been used in the field of physiology since at least the middle of the 19th century: SYN'ERGY, ''Synergi'a'', ''Synenergi'a'', (F.) ''Synergie''; from ''συν'', 'with', and ''εργον'', 'work'. A correlation or concourse of action between different organs in health; and, according to some, in disease. :—Dunglison, Roble''Medical Lexicon''Blanchard and Lea, 1853 In 1896, Henri Mazel applied the term "synergy" to social psychology by writing ''La synergie sociale'', in which he argued that Darwinian theory failed to account of "social synergy" or "social love", a collective evolutionary drive. The hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Coxeter
Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter (9 February 1907 – 31 March 2003) was a British-Canadian geometer and mathematician. He is regarded as one of the greatest geometers of the 20th century. Coxeter was born in England and educated at the University of Cambridge, with student visits to Princeton University. He worked for 60 years at the University of Toronto in Canada, from 1936 until his retirement in 1996, becoming a full professor there in 1948. His many honours included membership in the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Society, and the Order of Canada. He was an author of 12 books, including ''The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra'' (1938) and ''Regular Polytopes'' (1947). Many concepts in geometry and group theory are named after him, including the Coxeter graph, Coxeter groups, Coxeter's loxodromic sequence of tangent circles, Coxeter–Dynkin diagrams, and the Todd–Coxeter algorithm. Biography Coxeter was born in Kensington, England, to Harold Samuel Coxeter an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Two Cultures
"The Two Cultures" is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow, which was published in book form as ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'' the same year. Its thesis was that science and the humanities, which represented "the intellectual life of the whole of western society", had become split into "two cultures" and that this division was a major handicap to both in solving the world's problems. The lecture The talk was delivered 7 May 1959 in the Senate House, Cambridge, and subsequently published as ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution''. The lecture and book expanded upon an article by Snow published in the ''New Statesman'' of 6 October 1956, also entitled "The Two Cultures". Published in book form, Snow's lecture was widely read and discussed on both sides of the Atlantic, leading him to write a 1963 follow-up, ''The Two Cultures: And a Second Look: An Expanded Version of The Two Cultures and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Synergetics Abmod , the use of internal forces to overcome external forces, as in a self-supporting sculpture.
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Synergetics can refer to: *Synergetics (Fuller), a study of systems behavior suggested by Buckminster Fuller *Synergetics (Haken), a school of thought on thermodynamics and other systems phenomena developed by Hermann Haken See also *Synergy (other) *Tensegrity Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression (physical), compression inside a network of continuous tension (mechanics), tension, and arranged in s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
