This volume represents Buckminster Fuller's most incisive ideas and most intimate personal testaments. Like all of his ver- balized thought, it is extensive, totally revealing, technical, and complex. It assumes a committed earnestness on the part of the reader. It assumes that the reader shares his concern for what is basic in society and cosmology, and that in the nature of things microcosm and macrocosm are inseparable. The chapters vary in vocabulary and style. Some are papers that Bucky has worked and reworked to compress a maximum of content in a minimum of space. The latter reflect positive feedbacks, in which initial thoughts have acquired cumulative growths. Bucky is the one man in this age who, with no devia- tion, has met Matthew Arnold's sober challenge: to see the world whole and keep the vision constant. The reader is urged to follow closely the implications of each line in this book; to reread, if necessary, and discern the subtle intent of lines that seem difficult. In Bucky's writing there is no waste, no phrase empty of content, no allusion not made to sharpen the edge of an idea. And there is no one today who has more trenchant things to say. R. W. M. -8- |