by D.B. Koski using vZome
Some Bucky fans came out of the woodwork for this one. We've got a new Wanderer in Camus, WA.
Terry showed up with his video gear and kindly provided recording services. I gave him the slides on a thumb drive. He may eventually have time to cobble together a video. In the meantime, this was actually a dress rehearsal for another anticipated talk.
My topic: the concept of Dimension in Synergetics. I've talked about this a lot over the years.
Not many read Synergetics, and those that do need some guidance, from those of us who've done the homework. For example, when Fuller says "4D", he means something different from a geometer like Donald Coxeter, whom he much admired, nor does he mean what Einstein meant, though he greatly admired Einstein also.
I was keen to show that Synergetics did not dead end with the two volumes published in the late 1900s.
Those few willing to work in "tetravolumes" have continued to make new discoveries. David Koski in particular has specialized in collecting some "low hanging fruit" as we call it.
That the S:E (ratio of S to E modules) equals VE:Icosa (two shapes related by the so-called Jitterbug Transformation) is nowhere mentioned in Synergetics. The decomposition of volumes into sums of phi-scaled modular subvolumes has also been an active area of exploration.
These subvolumes may be constitutive in terms of adding in "linear combinations" to give precise bigger volumes (as when sizes of S make a Tetrahedron), but without fitting together as "solid" puzzle pieces, though sometimes they do that too.
Steve Mastin, with training as a crystallography, was intrigued, and thanked me for giving him more insights into this esoteric and off-beat corner of intellectual history.
Glenn also liked the slides, saying they were well organized.
Later today, I went to a new assignment, a public school, to teach MIT Scratch as a part of the after school program.
C.J. Fearnley has been in touch in the background. Today he tracked down some Karl Menger citations I'd been trying to find. Excellent.
