Reposting from Synergeo

I'm not intensively following this thread but yes, that How to Solve It book has a big following in the math ed community, which I also frequent, via the Math Forum (not sci.math, after that blow up about Wittgenstein some decade back).

In Synergetics, you get all these interconnecting prefrequency hypertoons that look like they must mean something on the one hand, and then a lot of empirical stuff to wade through on the other. Fuller was always tantalized by twilight zone possibilities and sometimes reached into the mirror pond and grabbed a cosmic fish. Or sometimes the fish just lept out at us: buckyballs, nanotubes...

I've always advertised my willingness to just watch the cartoons, and not worry overmuch about what they're about. I'm into the prefrequency pure geometry of it all, kind of as a test pattern (like on early TV -- dunno who still does those anymore, but using a concentric hierarchy with jitterbug would make a fine "screen saver" and I'm surprised no hippie has broadcast one yet). Then you've got the physics crowd, which wants to map whatsons to the A and B particles or combinations thereof. I've never been much of a CERN head myself -- philosophy major, more into memes than mesons. In Synergetics 2, the T->E particle transform is what "popped the balloon" twixt material and radiant energy (a very fine line).

Just getting clear on the cartoons has taken awhile, and there's a lot more to go. But I'm glad to see us swinging back towards visualizations just as movies like Cars prove once and for all that
computer assisted cartooning has a bright future. Greater Portland is getting into that market, with Nike's Phil Knight leading the charge (actually, he's continuing a lineage -- Will Vinton Studios helped get the ball rolling, plus we've always been a mecca for cartoonists). A claymation concentric hierarchy: I can see it now [holding fingers in a frame shape].