11 Appendix I: Glossary
1None of these definitions is rigorous, let alone exhaustive. The wording is mine, incorporating bits of Fuller’s.
2beauty: Unredundant appropriateness, perceived by taste. (See Taste).
3circle: A closed string of events more or less equidistant from a central event: in practice, a polygon with a large number of sides. The ideal circle to which pi pertains is eventless, since there is no point at which it can be said to change direction.
4compression: Pushing together, tending toward arcs of decreasing radius. A post or brick is a compressive element in a structure.
5coordinate system: An ideal grid from which you take measurements, most useful when its structure is similar to what you are measuring.
6dymaxion: Yielding maximum performance from available technology.
7ecology: The interdependence of events in a regenerative system.
8economics: (1) Properly, the management of the household.
9 (2) Commonly, the manipulation of public accounts. economist: An apologist for manipulated account books.
10energy: The agent of change, neither expendable nor augmentable.
11 318 | APPENDIX i: GLOSSARYephemeralization: The trend toward doing more with less. event: A unit of attention, characterized by the biblical ‘‘It came to pass.’’
12geodesic: (1) The most economical relationship between two energy events. (2) The shortest distance between two points on a sphere; it is part of a circle whose center is that of the sphere.
13geodesic system: A construction, roughly spherical, whose lines of support are geodesic. A geodesic dome is sliced from such a sphere.
14icosahedron: A closed system of twelve events, each joined to five others by thirty vectors that frame twenty triangular faces.
15irrational number: A number, such as pi, that cannot be expressed as a finite fraction. Though it cannot denote a census of events, such a number is often useful for rapid calculation.
16irrelevant: What I don’t want to think about just now. knowledge: The indestructible residuum of the mind’s functioning.
17line: A path traced between two events. Even the most economical path (see Geodesic) is never really ‘‘straight.’’
18mass: A locally self-regenerative pattern of energy. metaphysical: Pertaining to weightless reality. (Remember that even light has weight.) 2 + 2--4 is a metaphysical proposition.
19model: The physical embodiment of a set of principles, with minimum irrelevance or redundance.
20octahedron: A closed system of six events, called vertices. The twelve vectors that join them frame eight triangular faces. octet truss: A structure of alternating octahedra and tetra-hedra, capable of filling space in all directions.
21pattern: A recognizable set of relationships. If its elements sustain one another under stress it is said to be self-interfering. (Example: an overhand knot.)
22pi: A rapid-calculating device which assumes an ideal circle and states what its circumference/diameter ratio would be, i.e., about .
23point: An unresolved cluster of events.
24politics: The art of accommodating men’s wishes to real or fancied scarcity.
25pollution: A nuisance created by an unharvested resource.
26regenerative: Characterized by self-renewal. A forest regenerates at low frequency, the life-span of trees being measured in decades or centuries. A copper penny regenerates at high frequency, the time-scale of atomic events being exquisitely brief.
27relevant: Opposite of irrelevant, which see.
28simultaneous: Aha, nothing is, because light takes time to travel. The eye of God is perhaps independent of light, but none of us is God.
29space: What a change in your angle of vision subtends.
30sphere: A plurality of energy events more or less equidistant from a central event.
31structure: (1) A shape that maintains itself, i.e., uniquely the triangle. (2) ‘‘Concentration of a complex of individual events in a self-stabilizing complex relationship.’’
32synergy: Behavior of whole systems, unpredicted by knowledge of the parts or of any subassembly of parts.
33system: A configuration that divides the Universe into (1) everything outside the system; (2) the system itself; (3) everything inside the system. The tetrahedron is the minimum system, since nothing simpler can have an inside and an outside. Your house is a system. So is your body. So is this book.
34taste: Comparison performed with the certainty of habit.
35tensegrity: Tensional integrity, as in the earth-moon tug or a spider web amid branches. A tensegrity structure is a continuous tension network with compressional stiffeners. It is independent of outside anchorage, and stable in any position.
36tension: Pulling apart, toward arcs of increasing radius. A wire or rope is a tensile element in a structure.
37tetrahedron: A system comprising four events, called vertices. The six vectors that join them frame four triangular faces. time: What you wait in.
38topology: The science of connectedness.
39triangle: The minimum structure: three compressive sides, three tensile angles.
40universe: (1) The sum total of everybody’s physical and metaphysical experiences: toads, stars, dreams, Hamlet. (2) ‘‘The aggregate of nonsimultaneous, only partially overlapping, discrete events.’’ (3) ‘‘The minimum perpetual motion machine.’’
41vector: A direction with a definite length, which usually represents the product of mass and velocity; hence a model of an action that goes on for a finite time.
42vector equilibrium: The cuboctahedron: a system of twelve events, each joined to four others by twenty-four vectors that frame six quadrangular and eight triangular faces. The vertices are exactly as far from the center as they are from their immediate neighbors.
43waste: Escape of energies from a preferred pattern.
44wealth: Energy directed by knowledge.