Bucky Fuller on science and metaphysics

I have saved this quotation from Intuition, by R. Buckminster Fuller, for many years. So delicious! So true! So liberating, for those still under the thrall of the delusion that “science” defines reality. The free-form verse is a little strange at first, but then you realize that, if written out as prose, his thought would be much harder to follow.

While one percent  of society

has superficial awareness

of the existence of mathematical regularities

synergetically displayed by mass attraction

and supersynergetically displayed as precession,

no scientist has the slightest idea

what mass attraction is

nor why

synergy, precession, or radiation

exists or acts as they do.

 

Nobel laureate physicists,

in self-conscious defense

of this abruptly discovered ignorance

in regard to such cosmically important matters

(understanding knowledge of which

society has accredited them with possessing)

shrug off the necessity to explain

by saying “Here we will have to assume

some angels to be pushing things around.”

Though popularly unrealized,

it is in experimental evidence

that the origins of science

are inherently immersed

in an a priori mystery.

 

-R. Buckminster Fuller, Intuition 

 

Leave a Reply