Talk:Buckminster Fuller
Shouldn't that be "R. Buckminster Fuller"? That's the way his name always appeared (even on the stamp illustrating this article). Being another person that goes by their middle name, I guess I'm senstive to the common "first initial dropping syndrome" that afflicts many people. ;-)
Regarding the last sentence: "was friends with" is a very awkward phrase...should be replaced.
Was he really a Unitarian? --Anon.
Not precisely. His views and beliefs were fairly close to what we'd term "Unitarian", but I'm not sure he used that term to describe himself. He came from a strong Transcendentalist background, and his (great?) aunt, Margaret Fuller was a well-known writer in this area. Bucky often spoke of "Universe" (with a capital "U") as a pronoun, and spoke of it as others might use the term "God" or "Spirit" or "Great Energy" or the like. --PatrickSalsbury --- I'm a bit of a fuller fanatic: do you think external links to the patent office for his inventions might be a good idea Two16
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no mention of fullerine ? qqq You mean fullerene. -- Heron
In my NPOV edit, I've deleted the statement, "Many of Fuller's designs met resistance from purely profit-driven corporations, whose destructive legacies he would spend the next fifty years fighting."
I'm not opposed to saying he was opposed by corporations, but to make these kind of statements needs some stronger referential evidence (what corporation? what legacies?) Plus, really, in no context, I think, are the phrases "purely profit-driven" and "destructive legacies" appropriate here. If this goes a couple of days without any objection, I promise to replace my deletion with a referenced and qualified statement about Fuller's run-ins with corporations.
However, I'm willing to discuss and change my mind - that's why Talk's here, after all! --ObscureAuthor 13:56, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Anyone know what this is about [1] ? Dori | Talk 00:39, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)
Yes - he was honoured with having a commemorative stamp released on On July 12, 2004 by the United States Post Office on the 50th anniversary of his patent for the geodesic dome and on the occasion of his 109th birthday. Bruce, aka Agendum | Talk 20:47, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Anyone else think it's strange that it mentions his daughter and wife in ways that make it seem as though they were highly important to him, yet info about them, such as birth/marriage, or about their relationships, isn't included? I would add, but i don't know any more about him than this article. Xyzzyva 01:28, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
The point included about Fuller having received 50 honorary doctorates strains credulity -- even in the case of aman who succeeded as an inventor, was accepted into academia without graduating with any four-year degree, and wrote and lectured. I have no doubt about Fuller's accomplishments, but the statement about so many honorary doctorates does raise my incredulity. On what basis is this bit of info given? - J.R.
- It might sound surprising, but it is probably true or there abouts. A quick google search shows people quoting a range of different figures, but the Buckminster Fuller Institute suggests 47 honorary degrees.
- Particlularly in America, the point about honorary degrees is that they are not really for the benefit of the recipients. They are really there to add spice to the degree ceremony, providing some extra interest for the parents patiently waiting for their Johnie's moment. More particularly, most universities today run very lucrative alumni programs, and the only reason for the alumni to sit through the ceremony is to see who's who of famous people getting honorary degrees. As such, to be offered an honorary degree, the most important thing is to have done something which makes you a household name.
- The second most important thing, is to already have been given an honorary degree. Most of the major colleges check the list of last year's honorary degrees from other colleges when coming up with ideas for who to invite this year. Once you are sufficiently famous, it is quite feasible to pick up 5-10 honorary degrees a year until you run out of universities - the limit becomes your willingness to travel to the less famous universities. The record is apparently held by Theodore Hesburgh who has 150 honorary degrees. -- Solipsist 20:39, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
geometry
The article currently claims all solids constructed of regular polygons, except the icosahedron, have a volume that is an integral number of unit-tetrahedrons.
Really? It's not even true for all all Platonic solids, much less all Archimedean solids and Johnson solids.
The area of a unit-radius sphere is almost exactly 29 unit triangles ( 29.02 ...).
My cheat-sheet says (is there an approprate wikipedia article for this table ?)
Volume (in unit tetras)
shape
1 tetrahedron with edge length 1
3 cube with face diagonal 1
4 octahedron with edge length 1
6*sqrt(3) cube with edge length 1
sqrt(10)*3/2 icosahedron with edge length 1
sqrt(10)*5/2 dodecahedron with edge length 1
8*π*sqrt(3) sphere with radius 1
(someone should double-check these numbers)
Could we replace that statement with something more interesting than "Octahedrons with integral edge length and cubes with integral diagonal length have a volume that is an integral number of unit tetrahedrons" ?
--DavidCary 20:09, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Biography Gaps
There are some significant gaps in the biographical aspect of this article: Obviously, Fuller was an unconventional learner -- at odds with university life after high school, obviously a self-directed, successful "autodidact" -- but how did he learn advanced math? In some of his later writings, he stresses the importance of mathematics and of the math-based info utilized by engineers and designers. But what happened after he was twice dismissed from Harvard? (I'm referring to Fuller's acquiring the knowledge and skills of an engineer.)
Also, I would suggest we removed the bit about all the honorary doctorates until substantiation is brought forward. I have little doubt that Fuller may have been awarded numerous honorary degrees, including doctorates, but who kept count? How do we know what is accurate? The info included now does not successfully firm up the glories of R.B.F.'s mature years; rather, it simply provokes question about the quality of the article.
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I agree, his bio is really fishy; it completely fails to mention his attendance at the US Naval Academy. --65.115.176.41 23:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Synergetics
May I draw your attention to this article, now in AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Synergetics, thanks. Alf melmac 20:23, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Buckminster Fuller's ideas -- for yesterday?
I get the impression that Fuller's career didn't lead to much of long-term importance. Geodesic domes haven't revolutionized architecture; nobody with any power or authority advocates taking care of "100% of humanity" through "design science"; we still don't have a good measure of the state of the world's resources despite Fuller's invention of the World Game (just look at the debate and conflicting propaganda about whether we have reached Peak Oil or not); and we certainly haven't "ephemeralized" much of our material culture, with the trend towards SUV's, McMansions, mega shopping centers and increasingly supersized human bodies.
Indeed, from an inventing standpoint people would do better to study Genrich Altshuller's Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (Russian acronym TRIZ) than Fuller's word-salads about "synergetics." Altshuller and his students have developed something nonobviously true but genuinely useful that others can learn to apply to new problems, unlike the case with Fuller's weird, neoplatonic treatises.
- /me listens interestedly and awaits the revelation of how exactly this relates to the article. --Maru (talk) Contribs 22:27, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
criticism?
This article seems to me to be too positive about Fuller's contributions, and maybe too cloesly drawn from the Buckminster Fuller Institute (which obviously is really pro-Fuller). I don't know much about architecture, but I've heard that Fuller's domes are considered to be notorious for leaking and low durability. Could we get some criticism from architectural sources in this article? As has been mentioned, his biography should be filled in more. It also seems to be standard Wikpedia style for biographies to come first in the article.