Definition of Synergetics:

Synergetics is Fuller's name for the geometry he advanced based on the patterns of energy that he saw in nature.

For him, geometry was a laboratory science with the touch and feel of physical models--not rules out of a textbook. He started with models of the closest packing of spheres. From that basic starting point he derived triangles as the most economical relationship between events.

COSMIC FISHING: An Account of writing Synergetics with Buckminster Fuller. by E.J. Applewhite. Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., New York, c1977 hardback.

E.J. Applewhite on Synergetics

In his efforts to clarify the meaning and importance of synergetics , E.J. Applewhite Jr. stands second to none -- except, of course, Bucky himself. What Ed says on synergetics is source material, and his contribution to the subject cannot be overstated.

For a great overview of Synergetics, check out 'Synergetics on the Web' by Kirby Urner

Albert Einstein

Excerpts from R. Buckminster Fuller's book Cosmography

In his daring concept of universal evolution as constant motion, as put forth and written into (unwitting) poetry by Einstein, we have then the greatest conceptioning and greatest communication by a human being to other human beings not only in the 20th Century but possibly in any other of the centuries. Therefore I see that Einstein is certainly the great artist of the 20th Century. Einstein becomes the prototype scientist-artist of the not only the 20th Century but of the now looming 21st Century.*

Color sketch of the Jitterbug Transformation (1948)

"The difference between synergetics and conventional mathematics is that it is derived from experience and is always considerate of experience, whereas conventional mathematics is based upon 'axioms' that were imaginatively conceived and inconsiderate of information progressively harvested through microscope, telescopes, and electronic probings into the non-sensorially tunable ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum."

  —RBF to EJA, Somerset Club, Boston, 22 April 1971 From the Synergetics Dictionary

Click on the link below to read Clinton's Equal Central Angle Conjecture, a 9 page PDF paper on Goldberg polyhedra by BFI board member Joe Clinton. "In 1937 Michael Goldberg introduced 'a class of multi-symetric polyhedra' consisting of twelve pentagons, eight quadrilaterals or four triangles and all additional faces being hexagons. Thus he introduced the fact that 'trihedral polyhedrea which posses the same number of hexagonal faces in addition to 12 (8, or 4) regularily and symmetrically disposed pentagons (quadrilaterals, or triangles) can be topologically different'"

In May 1955, a group of students from The School of Design, North Carolina State College at Raleigh, produced a booklet entitled "An Introduction to the Energetic-Synergetic Geometry of R Buckminster Fuller." The booklet was"basically an attempt to illustrate the thought proceses and principles which have led to the development of geodesic structures." It would be wonderful to see the contents of the rest of the booklet but unfortunately this interesting cover piece is all that we have found so far.
» Click here for a bigger version

Revised for 2005 by Bob Burkhardt


Upon my completion of my initial reading of Buckminster Fuller's two Synergetics books
(Synergetics, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975, and Synergetics 2, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979), or perhaps in the middle of that reading, I conceived a great interest in tensegrity structures and the mathematics involved in designing them. Bucky's idea of building a dome big enough to cover an entire city had a certain fascination for me as well.

Below please find a six page PDF document that details the Development of Tensegrity Structures. This overview had previously been included in the Tensegritoy Toys produced by Design Science Toys Ltd
Development of Tensegrity Structures (PDF)

Eleven models from the Buckminster Fuller Institute

These and similar models were used by Fuller to demonstrate the concepts of "energetic-synergetic geometry" in his public lectures. Larger versions of these QTVR objects will be part of an upcoming exhibition based on the archive. Definitions of some terms coined by Fuller to describe the geometry used in these models may be found in the glossary. To search the contents of the Fuller archive at Stanford, see the Finding aid to the R. Buckminster Fuller Collection, Stanford University Libraries. Copyright © by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
» Click here to view the models

The revolutionary architect-engineer's own patent revelation about his basic structurial discoveries



Architect, engineer and cosmologist R. Buckminster Fuller and [Following] three of his basic structures: Tensegrity mast, Geodesic dome, octet truss in the Fuller exhibition, Modern Museum, N.Y.
Note from Robert Gray:

This paper appeared in Portfolio and Art News Annual, No.4, 1961. In addition to this article there is an accompanying Introduction by John McHale.