How Would You Define CADS?
In Summer 1992, we sent a questionnaire to a number of close colleagues and associates of Buckminster Fuller: This questionnaire on Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science (CADS) asked the following questions:
- How would you define CADS?
- What is its relevance to today’s world?
- What would you consider to be the highest priorities for advancing the concerns of Design Science in the 1990’s and beyond?
We received an excellent response covering a wide range of views.
How would you define comprehensive anticipatory design science?
E. J. Applewhite, Author, Editor
Writing as “Daedalus” in a column of the New Scientist 25 years ago, the British polymath D. E. H. Jones predicted the advent of carbon cage molecules. In the literature of buckminsterfullerene this is now cited as the earliest collateral (i.e., non-experimental) reference.
Bucky often described such insights as neighboring disclosures. His commitment to empirical methods (such as P.W. Bridgman’s operational procedure) would not have dimmed his satisfaction in Jones’s strictly intuitive foray. . an exemplar of the anticipatory nature of Design Science as applied to the material world.
It remained for Fuller’s geodesics to introduce the pentagonal bonds to provide the “discontinuities” required for self-closing curvature. Fuller did this by starting with wholes; it could never have been done by starting with parts.
Jay Baldwin, Writer, Editor Technical Consultant
RBF didn’t say things halfway. The term means exactly what Webster’s definitions of words imply. Unfortunately, most designers are not comprehensive, anticipatory only of profits (client’s profits), and rarely scientific.
Russell Chu, Construction Company President
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science is the continued acceleration of doing more with less, applying our accumulated knowledge and resources in an all-encompassing manner — anticipating all our needs, nature’s needs and Universe’s needs on behalf of humanity’s, nature’s and Universe’s integrity.
Tony Sutherland Gwilliam, Architect, President of Tensegrity International
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Yasushi Kajikawa, Director of Synergetics Institute in Japan
Anticipatory Design Science is the study of how to live on the whole earth without ecologically damaging it. It also attempts to find out how long we have to achieve this harmonious conditions, it calculates the time it will take to produce a physical solution to bridge the gap between human desires and the universes environmental requirements.
Hugh Kenner, Author, Professor
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science means, chiefly, working from envisaged wholes inward toward realizable parts. The danger, of course, as we may learn from the current collapse of Marxism, is that the guiding vision of the whole may be utterly false.
Glenn Olds, Commissioner, Dept. of Commerce & Economic Dev., Alaska
It is the science (i.e., dependable, public knowledge) of the ordered design, comprehensible principles by which our universe works, and which we can expect, understand, and predictably apply to partner with and refashion our natural and human world.
Michael Paterra, Economist
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science is RBF’s more than fifty years of exploration in world gaining” to his associates and students who are engaged in his direct work, Design Science is updating. enhancing, reinforcing arid communicating his explorations and strategies in order to bring World Game evolution into high gear and high visibility.
H. F.W. Perk, Professor, Community Development Dept., SIU First
COMPREHENSIVE means always start with wholes. recognizing that nature is all of one piece (there are no separate Department of Physics, Chemistry. Biology, or whatever), and investigate the whole omni-directionally: second, ANTICIPATORY means to look well into the future — we can never change one iota of the past — to try and apprehend the forces arid factors which will influence events, in order to take these into account; third, DESIGN means to use one’s imagination to intentionally create possibilities and alternatives to be potentially realized; and fourth, SCIENCE means to ground these imaginative possibilities and intentions in the facts of experience, bringing to bear what is already well comprehended.
Richard Pollack, Engineer
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science requires that each of us use our metaphysical insights in the service of all of our fellow creatures, each of whom is vested with a large or small portion of life. The best and highest application of those insights should make it possible for all humans to have the leisure opportunities to pursue their highest inward calling and to enter into service to humanity in the physical universe. As Bucky said, we are each a unique accumulation of experiences, and we each constitute a resource.
Lorna Sadler-Akhil, Teacher, Performer
I assume that if our Design Science is in harmony with the Universe design, it will also be environmentally sound, neither depleting resources nor causing pollution and buildup of wastes; i.e. everything would recycle at a rate compatible with ephemeralization as well. This model also assumes that aesthetic values are included in all operations done by humans.
Allegra Fuller Snyder, Professor Emeritus, UCLA
Understand everything you are confronted with from the largest perspective possible, a world perspective, if possible. Be sensitive to the patterns of change.
Wyvetter Young, State Representative, Illinois House of Representatives
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science is the game of the Universe playing itself out in the most healthy, environmentally sound, thoughtful, spontaneously cooperatively productive experiencing possible. This science anticipates what is going to happen and then sees to it that it happens in the best way. “Best” being in accord with the integrity of tine Universe. It is universal regernerative discovery (if what is going to happen through disciplines and principles.
What is its relevance to today’s world?
E. J. Applewhite
It remains critically omni-interrelevant.
Jay Baldwin
The concepts are our best hope, and they are absolutely essential for the sustainable technology-based civilization we must develop. “Comprehensive” means technology and nature always con-considered.
Russell Chu
Fuller prognosticated the irrelevancy of the political systems by the end of 1980s and by the year 2000 he say 100% of humanity being taken care of in an unprecedented and unrecognizable standard of living.
Political events are accelerating towards irrelevancy. The Cold War (WWII) is officially over, as of December 25th, 1991; the soviet Union is no longer, therefore, the reasons behind the conflict and the siphoning of the trillions of dollars from life enhancing resources Is over. We should now feel less hesitant and more confident in applying Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science.
Tony Sutherland Gwilliam
As the old structures and boundaries break up arid are felt as irrelevant, we need to consider our planet in a comprehensive way. Bucky’s proposals begin with the whole as integrated and synergistic and provide a necessary guide in the rebalancing and trimtabbing of our relationship to the planet Earth. All of the planet’s inhabitants must live out their full potential.
Yasushi Kajikawa
Its relevance to today’s world is that it enables us to use the technology we have in a manner which is beneficial to the world as opposed to harmful. It solves environmental problems by making use of muted physical resources in a syntropic way.
Hugh Kenner
It seems obvious that the more thinking we do, the better. The automobile became (in Guy Davenport’s words) “a mechanical cockroach eating up our cities” because it was developed in isolation from any concept (if what roads and cities would have to become).
Glenn Olds
In a badly broken and divided world, within and without, there is no greater need than for the confident hope that the world’s design earn be comprehended anticipated, and emulated as a directive for building and rebuilding a divided life and world.
Michael Paterra
Now is tine time RBF anticipated that his Design Science strategies would he needed. It is important to today’s world because it promises feasible and logical means for humanity to exercise its option to become omni-successful in the world economy.
H.F.W. Perk
There has never been a time when this paradigm was more relevant than now: at the conjunction of the end of the Cold War, the beginning of the Solar Age, and the transition to a post-industrial information era.
Richard Pollack
Air, water, housing amid power are all treated with the same 100 year old design artifacts. Only transportation is slightly better than it was 100 years ago (and some would argue the world is better”). We must re-think all of these systems, in view of population patterns and reduction of nuclear fossil energy sources. Solar Power is a must.
Lorna Sadler-Akhil
We have urgent environmental problems, as well as problems of haves and have-nots which seem to be in conflict Without Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science, the need to respect the environment; indeed, mere survival can produce adverse effects of forests. Once CADS comes into play, we can expect some of the social and political repercussions of the have/have not dichotomy to be alleviated.
Allegra Fuller Snyder
Acknowledge your own power as a creative and intuitive thinker yen always base your thinking on a firm awareness, understanding and respect for your own and others’ acute observation and analysis of, as well as participation inn tine world around us.
Wyvetter Young
The tool of Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science helps us to complete Artifacts amid satisfy the needs of humanity in the most competent way.
What would you consider to be the highest priorities for advancing the concerns of design science in the 1990’s and beyond?
E. J. Applewhite
The Institute should give highest priority to those projects which will accelerate recognition of Design Science and synergetic accounting within the established disciplines. In is not just with chemistry (as in buckminsterfullerenes) that Fuller’s work has its resonance: there remain a lot of undiscovered correspondences in cartography. computer applications, engineering, and even economics and the law.
Jay Baldwin
We must teach the concepts, probably in conjunction with actual demonstration. (Get lots of good people thinking in CADS terms, and the rest will follow fine.)
Russell Chu
Design Science has been, and is being, applied by individuals, some knowingly and others unknowingly. It is of greatest priority to develop further the prognosticating tools Fuller developed in the World Game; for the tools will point to what needs to be done and the priorities.
Tony Sutherland Gwilliam
A live creative nurturing of the body, mind and spirit through design amid the understanding that our built environment is a teaching tool. Deal with a planet without man-made surface boundaries. Support the healthy development of the ex-USSR, ex Europe – in fact all ex-nations – and integrating the transforming infrastructures into a synergistic whole that uses both human and Earth’s resources in a truly responsible manner.
Let more people know of practical solutions – such as the global energy grid.
Yasushi Kajikawa
The highest priority for Design Science is to enter the educational field, it must be made more accessible and should be naught inschools and especially to young children. It should also be promoted in industry, because recently industry has become a source of problems (pollution, etc.). Design Science will re-shape industrial thinking, it will integrate man’s innate abilities with the modern industrial world he lives in.
Hugh Kenner
- Get people fed.
- Arrive at a reason for industrializing the Third World.
Richard Pollack
First the air we breathe, including the ozone hole. Next, the water we pollute. Trees pump water into the air. Trees are a concomitant priority with water. Then, housing, together with sanitation and clothing. Finally, food and power must be brought into balance.
Glenn Olds
- Clarify the grounds, method, and consequence of such a Design Science.
- Develop appropriate materials and tools to advance Design Science, Bucky’s accessible writing and materials and others.
- Find possibilities in educational institutions, professions, and private and public agencies for applying Design Science to the resolution of some of our pressing and unresolved problems – locally and globally.
Michael Paterra
As an economist, I see RBF’s “cosmic cost accounting” as the highest priority for advancing Design Science amid the World Game. The development of the world economy’s energy accounting system would generate World Game economic strategies and results that would catapult the World Game into high gear and high visibility.
It is the strategy of the human mind for facing and forging the architecture of a better world. It roots in a win/win scenario for clarifying amid elaborating the design that is the integrity of our universe (unisverion: “to turn into one”).
H.F. W. Perk
First: conversion from “killingry to livingry”. Second: “making visible the invisible,” i.e., the big patterns affecting the future of all of us. Third: facilitating participation by all in realizing the foregoing, which means a massive public educational effort.
Lorna Sadler-Akhil
Point out, perhaps in the mass media, the potential planetary harmony that is possible if we use such ideas of Bucky’s as ephemieralization, real wealth accounting, extraction and recycling of all useful materials from “waste,” and others. Real wealth accounting is an important one. I wouldn’t just stick to architecture: design includes everything about the way we function on the planet.
Wyvetter Young
The highest priority for advancing the concerns of Design Science should be teaching the precepts of lucky so the Artifacts he worked on can become realities. I am particularly interested in Old Man River City. We are establishing the Old Man River City Synergy University as a place to orient students of the Universe in Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science. I send omit a call to all who worked with Bucky.