Conceptuality: a Synergetics Approach to Discontinuity - Part I

The following two documents from Chapter 500.00 Conceptuality of Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller are suggested reading regarding fractals and the discontinuous nature of reality.

• http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/print/p1900.pdf - Conceptuality sections 519.00 Point, 520.00 Wavilinearity: Fixes, 521.00 Vectors: Trajectories, 522.00 Deliberately Nonstraight Line, 523.00 Vertexes: Crossings
• http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/print/p2400.pdf - Conceptuality sections 524.00 Novent, 525.00 Solids: Matter, 526.00 Space

Also, see my web page http://www.karmatetra.com/ISDE5/Fulldome_Visual_Acuity.htm in which I calculate the Digital Fulldome Limit of Visual Acuity.

This is perhaps your first experience reading Bucky's writings. In addition, Synergetics is a unique written record of the purest expression of Bucky's mind. It is no doubt that you will have some difficulties with the idiosyncratic language and sentence structure. Do not dispair. Simply read through it as if you are reading poetry. Some concepts may seem obvious and straightforward. Other concepts may take several readings before they start to make sense. Hopefully, you will appreciate the door that Bucky has opened for us with his Synergetics.

Following are some highlighted paragraphs from the two documents that I have included here because they are especially relevant to our discussion. Note that all paragraphs are numbered in order to easily identify the heirachy of where the paragraph fits into the indexed Synergetics volume:

519.02 Without insideness, there is no outsideness; and without either insideness or outsideness, there is only a locus fix. Ergo, "points" are inherently nondemonstrable, and the phenomena accommodated by the packaged word point will always prove to be a focal center of differentiating events. A locus fix constitutes conceptual genesis that may be realized in time. Any conceptual event in Universe must have insideness and outsideness. This is a fundamentally selforganizing principle.

520.11 All actions are spiral because they cannot go through themselves and because there is time. The remote aspect of a spiral is a wave because there are no planes.

521.201 Pure mathematics' axiomatic concepts of straight lines are completely invalid. Lines are vector trajectories.

522.01 The so-called pure mathematician's straight line must be the "impossible"; it must be instantly infinite in two infinitely remote opposite directions. All of its parts must be absolutely, uniformly nothing and simultaneously manifest as discretely, and infinitely divisible, increments

See Fig. 522.09 (from the first link) The Deliberately Nonstraight Line - Does this remind you of a fractal?

524.03 All of our experiences are periodically terminated: the termination characterizes both the physical and the metaphysical aspects of our observing faculties and the observed phenomena. There are no experimentally known continuums. Physics has found no "solids."

524.21 It is experimentally demonstrable that an apparent "plane" is a "surface" area of some structural system. There are no experimentally demonstrable continuums. All that has been found is discontinuity, as in star constellations or atomic nuclear arrays. Areas are discontinuous by constructional definition. Areas, as system "faces," are inherently empty of actions or events, and therefore are not "surfaces."

524.31 There are no surfaces. Therefore, there are no areas.

525.01 If subvisibly modulated spiraling wave lines cannot go through the same point at the same time, there can be no continuous, perfectly level planes. Planes are not experimentally demonstrable. Solids are not experimentally demonstrable. Physical experiment has never discovered any phenomena other than discontinuous discrete-energy events, each uniquely identifiable amongst the gamut of frequencies of cyclic discontinuity of all the physical phenomena, as comprehensively and overlappingly arrayed in the vast frequency ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum "reality" has been found experimentally to embrace all known physical phenomena: visible, subvisible, or ultravisible thus far detected as present in Universe. There are no solids. The synergetic behavior of structures satisfactorily explains as discontinuous that which we have in the past superficially misidentified as "solid."

526.01 There is no universal space or static space in Universe. The word space is conceptually meaningless except in reference to intervals between high-frequency events momentarily "constellar" in specific local systems. There is no shape of Universe. There is only omnidirectional, nonconceptual "out" and the specifically directioned, conceptual "in." We have time relationships but not static-space relationships.

526.03 Space is the absence of events, metaphysically. Space is the absence of energy events, physically.

526.04 The atmosphere's molecules over any place on Earth's surface are forever shifting position. The air over the Himalayas is enveloping California a week later. The stars now overhead are underfoot twelve hours later. The stars themselves are swiftly moving in respect to one another. Many of them have not been where you see them for millions of years; many burnt out long ago. The Sun's light takes eight minutes to reach us. We have relationships but not space.

526.05 You cannot get out of Universe. You are always in Universe.

526.12 Space is the inescapable awareness of unaccounted otherness: the otherness is unconsidered but always and only co-occurrent with system considerations.

526.16 "Solids" are the frequencies that are too high for differential tune-inability. Space is the integral of all the frequencies that are too low for tune-inability.

526.25 The phenomenon death is as yet ultratunable system experience. We have no way of knowing whether any single, dual, or triple recurring experience events are to be followed by a fourth, as-yet-unexperienced, similar event which, if and when it occurs, may constitute a system-tuning-in, live realization of the omnioccurring, infratunable, tunable, and ultratunable systems' concentric intervalling. Death is intervalling. Life and death are always and only cooccurrent, life being concentrically successive tuning-ins and death being the as yet nontuned-in.

526.27 Physics finds that Universe has no solid things surrounded by, and interspersed with, space. Life is an inventory of tuning-ins and tuning-outs of experience. Birth is the first tuning in; death may not be the last.

526.35 Systems divide all of Universe. Thought divides all of Universe. Thought is inherently systemic whose inherency always has its oherency of space. Only systems can communicate space. Space is systems-defined-and-deferred awareness of potentially tunable otherness.

Morphology of a Virus Attack

I have just completed a sculpture in time to submit for the "Call for Work: The Art & Science of Systems Biology" at the Santa Fe Complex. This one was a real challenge. Lots of experimenting with new materials and techniques. I had only 3 weeks from initial concept to the deadline for the exhibition. It was a very ambitious project. At times I didn't think that I would make the deadline. Good news is I learned a lot that I will use in future art pieces.

The subject of the sculpture is a virus attacking a cell. Twenty triangular kiln cast glass panels form the icosahedral structure of the virus protein capsid. The icosahedron’s beautiful symmetry hides the dangerous nature of the viral morphology.

The sculpture captures the moment at which the virus has breached the cell. A portion of the violated cell membrane, portrayed in cast and slumped glass, shows the destructive effects of the viral invasion. Two strands of viral DNA represented by spiraling copper wire enter the cell membrane. The viewer can now visualize how the cell's metabolism will be taken over by the viral genetic material.

The sculpture is made entirely of kiln-cast recycled glass. One of my biggest challenges in creating this art piece was transforming the glass from beer bottles to a form and texture that was representative of the quality that I wanted to achieve. Other materials include copper wire, brass rod, silicone adhesive and wooden base.

Ayn Rand on Art and Creativity

A tenent that I particularly appreciate in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is that the stated role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally.


Ayn Rand said, “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”