A Fuller Explanation by Amy C. Edmondson

from the Preface

Buckminster Fuller has been alternately hailed as the most innovative thinker of our time and dismissed as an incomprehensible maverick, but there is a consistent thread running through all the wildly disparate reactions. One point about which there is little disagreement is the difficulty of understanding Bucky. "It was great! What did he say?" is the oft-repeated joke, describing the reaction of a typical enraptured listener after one of Fuller's lectures.

Not surprisingly then, Fuller's mathematical writing has not attracted a mass audience. Rather, synergetics has become a sort of Fuller proving ground, into which only a few scientific-minded types dare to venture. "Oh, I'll never be able to understand it then" has been the response of countless people upon learning that the subject of my book is synergetics. This reaction would have saddened Bucky immensely: he was so sure his geometry was appropriate for five-year-olds! However, such shyness is understandable; deciphering Fuller's two volumes, Synergetics and Synergetics 2, requires a sizable commitment of time and patience from even the most dedicated reader. Study groups have gone a long way toward helping individuals unravel the idiosyncratic, hyphenated prose of these two works, but the task, still arduous, is not for everyone. However, as those who dared it will have discovered, the major concepts presented in Fuller's intimidating books are not inherently difficult, and much of synergetics can be explained in simple, familiar terms. That is the purpose of A Fuller Explanation.