By  Sheldon Greaves

One of the legendary minds of the 20th century whose work will continue to enlighten the current century is R. Buckminster Fuller. “Bucky” as he preferred to be called was not only remarkable for the prodigious output of her fertile and fecund brain, but for doing so outside the ivy-covered halls of academe–at least at first. This is not widely known, nor is the fact that he never earned a college degree. In fact, he had the distinction of being expelled from Harvard… twice. Later, academics embraced him as one of their own, and he reciprocated; Fuller was known for his willingness to speak anywhere he was asked and held several temporary professorships while amassing a huge number of honorary degrees by the time he passed away in 1983.

One of the obstacles faced by young Fuller, before he became world famous, was that of publication. Without a degree, no Journal or publisher would accept his work. This is still a problem today; there are plenty of smart, talented minds out there that cannot find wider expression unless their intellectual acumen also includes blog or podcast promotion skills. In Bucky’s case, he “published” his discoveries by filing patents with the US patent office. So it was with considerable delight that my weekly visit to the used book section of our local St. Vinnie’s (which really does have a remarkable variety of books for sale) uncovered this volume of Fuller’s patents, as he filed them, complete with sketches, technical drawings, and so on. It is the mind of Fuller, and his vision of the future.

Fuller was a man of his time, which is to say that he had a faith in technology’s capability to elevate the human species that sometimes strikes one as naive, sometimes uncommonly sensible, but always visionary. He had an ability to see through much of the chaff that blinds people to the realities of our world, the most fundamental being that poverty and need were unavoidable. Bucky had his reasons for thinking that such was not the case, and marshaled evidence and simulations like the World Game to prove his point. But it always seemed to me that he was starting from intuition, which I think is a good thing.

I have always been particularly impressed by Fuller’s approach to learning, which he recorded in considerable detail, perhaps more completely than any other human in history. A nice sampling of his pithier quotes and thoughts on, well, pretty much everything is available at this wonderful resources page at the site, buckyisback.com. Among the more admirable of his practices was his unflinching ability to face his own mistakes and learn from them. This is something that academics hold forth as a crucial part of good scholarship, but frequently don’t do very well when faced with mistakes. Drilling a dry well in academia is not considered a good thing. Hence our last quote:

I’d like to make a school like that. Maybe someday.