11 APPENDIX I: Glossary
2None of these definitions is rigorous, let alone exhaustive. The wording is mine, incorporating bits of Fuller’s.
3 beauty: Unredundant appropriateness, perceived by taste. (See Taste).
4 circle: 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.
5 compression: Pushing together, tending toward arcs of decreasing radius. A post or brick is a compressive element in a structure.
6 coordinate system: An ideal grid from which you take measurements, most useful when its structure is similar to what you are measuring.
7 dymaxion: Yielding maximum performance from available technology.
8 ecology: The interdependence of events in a regenerative system.
9 economics: (1) Properly, the management of the household.
10 (2) Commonly, the manipulation of public accounts. economist: An apologist for manipulated account books.
11 energy: The agent of change, neither expendable nor augmentable.
12 318 | APPENDIX i: GLOSSARY ephemeralization: The trend toward doing more with less. event: A unit of attention, characterized by the biblical ‘‘It came to pass.’’
13 geodesic: (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.
14 geodesic system: A construction, roughly spherical, whose lines of support are geodesic. A geodesic dome is sliced from such a sphere.
15 icosahedron: A closed system of twelve events, each joined to five others by thirty vectors that frame twenty triangular faces.
16 irrational 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.
17 irrelevant: What I don’t want to think about just now. knowledge: The indestructible residuum of the mind’s functioning.
18 line: A path traced between two events. Even the most economical path (see Geodesic) is never really "straight.’’
19 mass: 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.
20 model: The physical embodiment of a set of principles, with minimum irrelevance or redundance.
21 octahedron: 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.
22 pattern: A recognizable set of relationships. If its elements sustain one another under stress it is said to be self-interfering. (Example: an overhand knot.)
23 pi: A rapid-calculating device which assumes an ideal circle and states what its circumference/diameter ratio would be, i.e., about 22 / 7.
24 point: An unresolved cluster of events.
25 politics: The art of accommodating men’s wishes to real or fancied scarcity.
26 pollution: A nuisance created by an unharvested resource.
27 regenerative: 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.
28 relevant: Opposite of irrelevant, which see.
29 simultaneous: Aha, nothing is, because light takes time to travel. The eye of God is perhaps independent of light, but none of us is God.
30 space: What a change in your angle of vision subtends.
31 sphere: A plurality of energy events more or less equidistant from a central event.
32 structure: (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.’’
33 synergy: Behavior of whole systems, unpredicted by knowledge of the parts or of any subassembly of parts.
34 system: 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.
35 taste: Comparison performed with the certainty of habit.
36 tensegrity: 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.
37 tension: Pulling apart, toward arcs of increasing radius. A wire or rope is a tensile element in a structure.
38 tetrahedron: A system comprising four events, called vertices. The six vectors that join them frame four triangular faces. time: What you wait in.
39 320 | APPENDIX i: GLOSSARY
40 topology: The science of connectedness.
41 triangle: The minimum structure: three compressive sides, three tensile angles.
42 universe: (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.’’
43 vector: 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.
44 vector 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.
45 waste: Escape of energies from a preferred pattern.
46 wealth: Energy directed by knowledge.