SYNERGY
“I am confident that humanity’s survival depends on all of our willingness to comprehend feelingly the way nature works.”
All parts working in tandem can manifest exponentially more than the sum of their individual capacities.
Synergy is a key concept in the prolific work of inventor R. Buckminster Fuller. Born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1895, he is most famously known for his Geodesic designs. A renowned 20th-century visionary, polymath, and practical philosopher, he dedicated his life to the betterment of humanity. His book “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” is one of the foundational texts that gave rise to concepts of sustainability and regenerative practices. Fuller’s work as a ‘comprehensive anticipatory design scientist’ spanned disciplines from architecture to engineering, science, geometry, design, and cartography, all in pursuit of solving global problems surrounding housing, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty.
At the core of Synergetics is Fuller’s critique of ancient Greek metaphysics. Synergetics seeks to identify and understand the methods that Nature employs in coordinating Universe -both physically and metaphysically- and provides a comprehensive method and a philosophy for problem-solving and design, and therefore has applications in all areas of human endeavour.
Synergy is the behaviour of a system unpredicted by the behaviour of its parts taken separately.
“Experience with Synergetics encourages a new way of approaching and solving problems. Its emphasis on visual and spatial phenomena fosters the kind of lateral thinking which so often leads to creative breakthroughs”