Design Science is a problem solving approach which entails a rigorous, systematic study of the deliberate ordering of the components in our Universe. Fuller believed that this study needs to be comprehensive in order to gain a global perspective when pursuing solutions to problems humanity is facing.



"The function of what I call design science is to solve problems by introducing into the environment new artifacts, the availability of which will induce their spontaneous employment by humans and thus, coincidentally, cause humans to abandon their previous problem-producing behaviors and devices. For example, when humans have a vital need to cross the roaring rapids of a river, as a design scientist I would design them a bridge, causing them, I am sure, to abandon spontaneously and forever the risking of their lives by trying to swim to the other shore."

  —R. Buckminster Fuller from Cosmography

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Design Science: A Framework for Change by Michael Ben- Eli

During the last quarter century, Buckminster Fuller's concept of Design Science has come to mean different things to different people, evolving in the process into a potent combination of method, metaphor and myth.

The purpose of this document is to refocus the concept, address it in the context of some reflections about design in general, and link Design Science to the sustainability challenge facing humanity today.

click to download: Design Science: A Framework for Change by Michael Ben-Eli [pdf 4.1mb]

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Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science

Toward the end of Buckminster Fuller's last public speaking engagement on June 26, 1983 he said, "People often ask me what I want to be remembered for. I don't want to be remembered. I'm not doing what I do to be remembered. I do hope what I've been able to discover and get out on paper, printed, will be read, and the significance will be appreciated. But I don't care about them appreciating me doing it. I want the people to appreciate the significance of it. So they'll act that way."

And people often asked Buckminster Fuller just what exactly he was and did. Sometimes he would respond to the first part of the question with the now oft-quoted statement, "I am not a noun -- I seem to be a verb." In answering the second part he would most importantly insist that he was not a specialist and would put forward his alternative, that he was a comprehensivist. Just as often he would refer to himself as a Design Scientist.

And so the phrase Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science emerged as perhaps the generic description of the initiative of Bucky Fuller.

So what is Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science (CADS)? It is certainly a mouthful. Or should we say a mind-full. Throughout his life, Buckminster Fuller described CADS in various ways, at various times, to various people. Toward a comprehensive definition of CADS, in this section we look at some of the things he said. We also look at the ways some people picked up the concept of Design Science, in print, and ran with it.

In this section some of our associates--including some of Bucky's friends, family and students--have defined Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science, and speculated on its relevance, now and in the future. As always we welcome your thoughts.

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See also:

» Introduction to Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science by Greg Watson
» Read an Introduction to Design Science by Amy Edmondson, author of A Fuller Explanation
» R. Buckminster Fuller on Design Science
» Curricula and the Design Initiative | Design Strategy by RBF
» 'What I am Trying to Do' — by Buckminster Fuller
» Design as Savior, Designer as Slave — article by J. Baldwin, author of BuckyWorks
» Design Science in the 1990's and beyond
» Bucky on Design Science - Audio
» Read more postings in our Design Science section on bfi.org

by Amy C. Edmondson, from A Fuller Explanation; Chapter 16, "Design Science", pages 258 through 259

"I did not set Out to design a geodesic dome," Fuller once said, "I set out to discover the principles operative in Universe. For all I knew, this could have led to a pair of flying slippers." This playful declaration stands as a concise summary of the philosophy behind Fuller's life's work and introduces the relationship of synergetics to design. "Design science," in the most general terms, maintains that faithful observation of Universe is the basis of successful invention. The idea therefore is not to invent some strange new gadget, hoping there will be a market for it, but rather to tap into the exquisite workings of nature. While the significance of scientific discoveries is not always immediately understood, the accumulated "generalized principles" have been applied in innovative ways throughout history, producing artifacts which have gradually transformed the physical environment. Therein lies the key to humanity's success aboard Spaceship Earth, explains Bucky Fuller.

Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects For Humanity (published in 1969) -- Contains Fuller's challenging blueprint for the future. Taken together, chapter 10; "Curricula and the Design Initiative" and chapter 11; "Design Strategy" succinctly lay out the critical elements of Fuller's approach to equipping the student of design to assume "the tasks that no one else was doing or attempting to do, which if done would physically and economically advantage society and eliminate pain."

This book is a must read for those committed to taking the design initiative.

From the Synergetics Dictionary: Under Design Science:

Acutely aware of our beings' limitations and acknowledging the infinite mystery of the a priori universe into which we are born, but nevertheless searching for a conscious means of hopefully competent participation by humanity in its own evolutionary trending while employing only the unique advantages inhering exclusively to the individual who takes and maintains the economic initiative in the face of the formidable physical capital and credit advantages of the massive corporations and political states and deliberately avoiding political ties and tactics while endeavoring by experiments and explorations to excite individuals' awareness and realization of humanity's higher potentials I seek through Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science and its reductions to physical practices to reform the environment instead of trying to reform men being intent thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less whereby in turn the wealth augmenting prospects of such design science regenerations will induce their spontaneous and economically successful industrial proliferation by world around services' managements all of which chain reaction provoking events will both permit and induce all humanity to realize full lasting economic and physical success plus enjoyment of all the Earth without one individual interfering with or being advantaged at the expense of another.

  —— R. Buckminster Fuller, Aboard our l, 000-miles-per-minute speeding Spaceship Earth within the outer reaches of the cosmically spiraling and expanding Milky Way, the Galactic Nebula. Modified from 152 to 200 words at the location on Spaceship Earth where the first man-made atomic explosion occurred: Alamogordo.RBF

also by J. Baldwin:


The Winter 1991 issue of Whole Earth Review presented a series of essays on technology by such innovators as Ivan Illich, Amory and Hunter Lovins (of the Rocky Mountain Institute), Howard Levine, Jerry Mander (of the Elmwood Institute) and Jay Baldwn, Technology & Community, Technology & Values, and Technology & Information were only some of the topics discussed, each essay responding to Mander's recent book, In the Absence of the Sacred, which explores the inherent limitations of technology and the abuse of present-day technology by corporate interests. In the following article, reprinted from Whole Earth Review, Baldwin discussed Design Science in his thoughtful, often cantankerous style.

In 1950, Buckminster Fuller set up an outline for a course in Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science. Taught at MIT in 1956 as part of the Creative Engineering Laboratory, this course by Fuller probably served as one of their more unusual offerings. The students who took the course, all engineers, industrial designers, materials scientists and chemists, represented research and development corporations across America. The following presents highlights from Fuller's syllabus outlining eight components of the course, written before the Dymaxion Map reached its final, icosahedral phase and preceding the publication of Synergetics I and II by twenty-five years.