# Full Text: William Blake & Buckminster Fuller: Lives in Juxtaposition (A study in Comprehensivity) > Extracted from `2023_BlakeFuller.pdf` --- ## Page 1 William Blake & Buckminster Fuller Lives in Juxtaposition // A study in Comprehensivity Presented for 52 Living Ideas January 8, 2023 Daniel A. Friedman daf.omg.lol ## Page 2 ●Context ●Comprehensivity ●Blake & Fuller in juxtaposition ●Conclusion ●Discussion Roadmap 1 1 1 1 ? # of slides ## Page 3 Some online resources And many other voices: past, present, and future Blake ● Blake Archive blakearchive.org/ ● Blake Quarterly https://blakequarterly.org/ ● The Complete Poetry and Prose of William, Erdman https://blake.lib.asu.edu/html/home.html ● William Blake: Religion and Psychology http://ramhornd.blogspot.com/ Fuller ● BFI bfi.org/ ● CJ Fearnley cjfearnley.com/ ● Trimtab Reading Group groups.google.com/g/trimtab-book-club ● Kirby Urner grunch.net/4dsolutions/kirby.html and github.com/4dsolutions ● Curt McNamara mcadsustainabledesign.com/profile/curt-mcnamara/ ● RW Gray rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html ● Struppi Pohl youtube.com/@HaileISela Context Epistemic status & an Invitation: ● This presentation is a draft linearized snapshot perspective, as presented by one volunteer forager on a given day ●The work is ongoing and long-term; I welcome those with interest to connect and collaborate on….. ○ Developing these juxtapositions alongside traditional and emerging practices of “Inquiry and Action” ○ Connect with the lives & ideas of: Kandinsky, Goethe, Sri Aurobindo, Krishnamurti, Friston, others ○ Ontologies for Fuller/Synergetics and Blake, integrating with Active Inference Ontology, others ○ Connections with multimedia, philosophical, analytical, mathematical, practical systems Synergetics Livestreams Playlist of 16 videos (so far) Deep readings & related topics to the text of Synergetics ## Page 4 Comprehensivity ● Today with our intention and attention, we aim towards the strangely-attracting heart of Comprehensivity ● Comprehensivity is something that will unfold through our participation and engagement across multiple scales ● We can explore this more in the Discussion section (and in hundreds of upcoming meetings, and times between) From “Collaborating for Comprehensivity” cjfearnley.com/CfC/#ANewTradition ●Comprehensivity is our ability to comprehend our worlds broadly and deeply. ●It is a facility in questioning, conceptualizing, interpreting, and acting to build a multi-perspectival yet integrated understanding of the world, how it works, and how it changes. ● It is the quality of our lives that shapes all we have learned in breadth for context and all we have learned in depth for clarity to form, as Buckminster Fuller put it, "adequately macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive" considerations to better engage our worlds and its peoples with understanding and effectiveness. ● It implies developing a large set of subjects about which one can effectively inquire, contextualize, interpret & assess, and creatively re-imagine and re-combine for meaningful insights and the forging of new possibilities. ● It entails developing a faculty for helping self and others build a broad range of interests and concerns, comprehensive knowledge, and skills, that is, a faculty for comprehensivity awareness and competency. ● It involves recognizing its inherent pathologies including analysis paralysis (an endless accumulation of information), value paralysis (an unrestrained accommodation of everyone's values), and the paralysis of wholism (an unlimited expansion of the whole). So it requires cultivating judgment to stay incisively relevant. ## Page 5 Juxtaposition Blake Fuller Images and Texts related to Buckminster Fuller Images and Texts related to William Blake concordances points of contact areas of alignment provocative connections realms of ongoing exploration What depth of field do we gain through juxtaposition? What is it to ride a bicycle? (Not just two unicycles) What is Unity & Why is it “at minimum two”? ## Page 6 Life & Times Blake Fuller 1757 1895 1700 1800 1900 2000 1827 1983 Location ● Born in Milton, Massachusetts, USA ● Well-documented travels around “Spaceship Earth” by land, sea, air, and mind ● Born in Soho, London, England ● Spent 3 years in Felpham (Sussex). Otherwise, life was in London ● Married with Catherine Boucher in 1782 when he was 25, lifelong relationship ● Catherine once wrote “I have very little of Mr Blake's company. He is always in Paradise.” ● The Blakes did not have children ● Married with Anne Hewlett in 1917 when he was 22, lifelong relationship ● Daughter: Alexandra (1918-1922) ● Daughter: Allegra (1927-2021) Mr. Fuller once observed: ''When two people as diametrically different as Anne and I get married, it either cracks up right away, or it turns out to be fantastically good - the way it has been for us.'' Family ● Early life was in School, US Navy, other work ● At 32: Transformative experience “Guinea Pig B” ● Used a life-long Chronofile as archive ● Extravagant life (in sense of Thoreau, Walden: “ I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! it depends on how you are yarded.”) Times ● Early inclination for the Arts ● Age 10-14, classical drawing training ● Developed engraving and other craft skills ● Diligent, prolific, eccentric aesthetic production ● Humble & challenging life of exhibitions, patronage ## Page 7 Practices & Professions Blake Fuller Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, plate 10: ●I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; ●I will not reason and compare: my business is to create. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Sought independence through insight (inquiry) and creation (action), in lifelong development Exhibited craft, skill, and commitment, and (reckless) professionalism across forms, genres, and communities ● Music (spontaneous and unrecorded) ● Visual media methods ○ Drawings ○ Woodcut ○ Relief etching (called “illuminated printing”, “Infernal Method”), link, 2 ● Paradigms, Themes, Memes: ○ Synergetics & Tensegrity ○ 4D TIMELOCK ○ Anticipatory Design Science ○ Dymaxion ○ Geodesic architecture ● Patents (BFI link) ● New words ● Processes & Constructions ○ Industrial ○ Physical Tools ○ Housing and Livingry ○ Cars and Transportation ○ Communications and Intelligence systems and architectures ● Books ● Poems ● Stories ● Myths and Mythologies ● Marginal annotations ● Diverse Visual Arts ● Written and spoken work ● Mass & personal communications ● Long-term Relationships ● Physical spaces (workshop, classroom, domestic) First the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged: this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away and displaying the infinite which was hid. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he used an acid-resistant liquid and drew and wrote, composing directly onto the copperplate (with brushes and a quill pen). When the acid-resistant liquid dried and hardened, the plate would be exposed to acid which etched away the uncovered parts of the copper. Because printing always reverses the design, the text had to be written backwards, and slanted appropriately, in order to appear the right way round when printed….The evolution in Blake's approach to illuminated printing that accompanied this change has been described as a shift from the idea of 'print-as-page' to 'print-as-painting'. ## Page 8 Deep Generativity Blake Fuller https://www.blakearchive.org/ https://blakequarterly.org/ The Dymaxion Chronofile: The Most Documented Life in History (Wired) Fuller's Chronofile contains over 140,000 pieces of paper, as well as 64,000 feet of film, 1,500 hours of audio tape, and 300 hours of video recordings. The Chronofile is cross-referenced alphabetically using 13,500 5x8 inch index cards. Photos from Fuller's childhood from age four were added retrospectively (Wiki). William Blake and Systems Theory The Attempted Unification of History and Psychology by Challie Facemire Link (2012) BFI Bibliography Grunch.net Personal Historical Mythological Allegorical Symbolic ## Page 9 Full Page Creativity Blake Fuller ## Page 10 Children & Education Blake Fuller Synergetics Preamble Highlighted accessibility for children (in age & in spirit) and all kinds of learners ● Blake certainly had a wonderfully tender heart for children. ● He was a peerless child advocate who, through his poetry and visual art, called for his fellow Englishmen to see and respond to the the plight of children forced to work long, grueling, hazardous hours providing virtual slave labor to unscrupulous businessmen. ● Among major writers, perhaps only Charles Dickens rivals Blake as an illustrator of the plight of orphans and street urchins. ● No great poet ever wrote more compassionately (or more frequently) about children than William Blake. From The HyperTexts “An educational revolution is upon us.” “Every Child Is Born a Genius” (link) I observe that every child demonstrates a comprehensive curiosity. Children are interested in everything and are forever embarrassing their specialized parents by the wholeness of their interests. The glorification of childhood is [a] dominant romantic feature of Blake’s poetry. In his poems child is a figure symbolizing God or Christ. His world of innocence however is not entirely untouched by unpleasant elements. Link ## Page 11 Symmetries Blake Fuller Keen attention to visual and symbolic symmetries in thought, history, biology, everything. From Synergetics Index Seven axes of symmetry, 100.105, 251.021, 251.18, 251.29, 415.50-53, 527.25, 986.204, Table 986.304, 986.317, 986.821, 987.111, Table 987.121, 987.122, 1040-1042.05, 1041.10-13, Fig. 1041.11, 1043.00-02, 1044.00-13, 1238.21 See also: Fourteen faces of truncated tetrahedron, Great circle foldability, Great circle spinnable symmetries Symmetrical & concentric, 987.044 Symmetrical contraction of vector equilibrium, 461.00-14, 1033.30-36 See also Jitterbug: Jitterbug model Symmetry: Symmetric, 167-70, 174, 222.51, 223.31, 260.41, 400.54, 445.07, 466.13-14, 506.43, 527.05, 536.01, 542.02,Fig. 542.02, 542.04, 622.10, 724.34, 953.50, Table 982.62, 982.70 See also: Axes of symmetry Central symmetry Conservation of symmetry Constant triangular symmetry Coordinate symmetry Cosmic symmetry Dynamic symmetry Great circle spinnable symmetries Maximum symmetry Omnisymmetric Rotational symmetry Seven axes of symmetry Symmetry & asymmetry, 168, 223.33, 223.34, 224.03, 260.33, 326.40, 400.05, 400.40-44, 400.51, 421.21, 427.01-02, 427.12, 529.40, 531.02, 532.10-16, 532.17, 602.01, 605.01, 620.04, 623.14, 632.01, 905.18, 905.71, 910.11, 936.14, 954.10, 986.634, 986.721, 990.04, 1031.11-16, 1053.30, 1239.10-31, 1232.23, See also Locally mixed symmetry 611.01 If the system's openings are all triangulated, it is structured with minimum effort. There are only three possible omnisymmetrical, omnitriangulated, least-effort structural systems in nature. They are the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron. When their edges are all equal in length, the volumes of these three structures are, respectively, one, requiring one structural quantum; four, requiring two structural quanta; and 18.51, requiring five structural quanta. Six edge vectors equal one minimum-structural system: 6 edge vectors = 1 structural quantum. Don't Fear the Symmetry: The Poetry of William Blake by Stephanie Vest ## Page 12 Blake Fuller Albion has a composite character second to none. It means (originally) England, but at a deeper level it means the cosmos, which is a man!. (In this Blake agrees with the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah, the Heavenly Man of Philo, St. Paul's heavenly man, the second Adam, and the cosmic man of Gnostic mythology, and the Hindu god, Krishna.). (Ramhornd) ●Tetrahedron! (or call it what you like) ●Tet is minimum system, has edge length and volume 1. ●“Unity is plural and at minimum 2” ●1+1+1+1=1 ● The Fourfold Vision & The Age of Imagination with Yasuhiko Kimura: New Spirituality of the Future https://youtu.be/SrR-ccTsajU ● Fourfold Vision: Why, What, How, Who? an Exploration https://youtu.be/vGX9_huMMZc Exploring Dynamics, Unity and Interactions of Tetrahedrons ("Quartrorbs") https://youtu.be/jNfpUFEjVL4 "Four Mighty Ones are in Every Man" The Development of the Fourfold in Blake By Dóra Janzer Csikós · 2003 Used a four-fold mnemonic to summarize systems (physical and cognitive), in terms of a unified-while-compositional geometric nature Martian Math School of Tomorrow Kirby Urner Fourfold Vision Link The word “fourfold” can be found twice in the 1611 Bible and once in Paradise Lost, but its frequent use by Blake is very striking. Contemporary readers may have detected an echo of Thomas Boston’s book Human Nature, in its Four-fold State, a popular work of theology which went through at least two dozen editions in Britain between 1720 and 1800. ## Page 13 Negations & Contradictions Blake Fuller Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3 Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. Jerusalem, Plate 17 Negations are not Contraries: Contraries mutually Exist: But Negations Exist Not: Exceptions & Objections & Unbeliefs Exist not: nor shall they ever be Organized for ever & ever: If thou separate from me, thou art a Negation: a meer Reasoning & Derogation from Me, an Objecting & cruel Spite And Malice & Envy: but my Emanation, Alas! will become My Contrary: O thou Negation, I will continually compell Thee to be invisible to any but whom I please, & when And where & how I please, and never! never! shalt thou be Organized Link 445.11 At eternal "outset," the vector equilibrium's frequency is none non, which is inactive, which is different in meaning from nonexistent. Zero is the inside-out phase of conceptual integrity; it is the eternal complementation of system. Quite the contrary to "nonexistent," it means only "eternally existent" in contrast to "temporarily existent." Experience is all temporary. Between experiences is the forever eternal metaphysical, which cannot be converted into existent. WITHOUT CONTRARIES IS NO PROGRESSION: IN VIEW OF BLAKE’S THE LAMB AND THE TYGER (link) Used logical paradigms which distinguish between Negation (not-A) and Contradiction (complement-to-A) Embodied and elaborated that paradigm into Art, Myth, and Beyond – Generating a system of their own ● “Everything I Know” (link) ● We have, then, I found there is what you call a multiplicative “two” and an additive “two.” There was an additive two of the poles for EVERY system in Universe. There was also a multiplicative two because there is a concave and a convex there is inherent duality of this congruence of an inside system because concave and convex are not the same. You just have to realize that you have a fundamental congruence of the macrocosm and microcosm. There is negative and positive simply congruent there, but you can’t separate them. ● I want you to realize then that you’re going to find in closest packing that the arrangement of centers of spheres and centers of spaces is this arrangement. Where you are suddenly going to discover that the vector equilibrium, I gave you originally the vector equilibrium flat, and then I gave you where it curved the edges, where it became convex, or it could be concave. The same vector equilibrium can become concave or it can become convex. And so can the octahedron. So we have, then, spaces that suddenly become spheres, they blow up and the spaces contract. So there is something terribly exciting going on here Vector Equilibrium and its Transformation Pathways (Laetus In Praesens) ## Page 14 Perception, Cognition, Action Blake Fuller Artistic, skillful, and professional use of physical tools Lifelong development of physical, social, and cognitive niche Cosmic, dual eso/exoteric perspective on the function and meaning of human life and sensemaking Aware and attentive towards historical and global traditions and practices of inquiry and action Situated their work expertly and explicitly in relation to past, present, and future colleagues Both find resonance with modern trends towards… ● Agential realism (Barad et al.) ● Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, Extended, Affective (4EA) cognitive science ● Active Inference, Free Energy Principle and Cognitive/Physical (another day!!!) ● Systems and Complexity: Reductionism/Holism, Emergence, etc…. ○ MU below from Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid Link “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell “Blake and the Mark of the Cognitive: Notes Towards the Appearance of the Sceptical Subject”, Sha 2019 WILLIAM BLAKE’S INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY: READING BLAKE AND KEN WILBER TOGETHER, Adams (2006 “In the Universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between there are doors.” “Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality.” Communications Physical media Bucky Inc. offers a deep exploration of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s work and thought to shed new light on the questions raised by our increasingly electronic world. It shows that Fuller’s entire career was a multi-dimensional reflection on the architecture of radio. He always insisted that the real site of architecture is the electromagnetic spectrum. His buildings were delicate mobile instruments for accessing the invisible universe of overlapping signals. Every detail was understood as a way of tuning into hidden waves. Architecture was built in, with, for and as radio. MAN IN UNIVERSE 1963 CRITICAL PATH 1981 ## Page 15 World-View Blake Fuller 'The Sky is an immortal Tent built by the Sons of Los; And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place Standing on his own roof, or in his garden on a mount Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe: And on its verge the Sun rises & sets, the Clouds bow To meet the flat Earth & the Sea in such an order'd Space: The Starry heavens reach no further but here bend and set On all sides & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold. And if he move his dwelling-place his heavens also move Where'er he goes & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss. Such are the Spaces called Earth & such its dimension. As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner As of a Globe rolling thro' Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro. The Microscope knows not of this nor the Telescope, they alter The ratio of the Spectator's Organs but leave Objects untouch'd; For every Space larger than a red Globule of Man's blood Is visionary.' Intense, unique, charismatic world view characterized by: ● Emphasis on physicality/metaphysicality and constraints/affordances of the brain and body ● Authentic perspectives on histories and understandings of people and ideas ● Deep fractal mythologies (personal, national, global, cosmic) scattered across works ● Tone can be ambiguous, is it a prophecy, prediction, an exhortation, or what? ● Intense criticisms and compliments of other ideas and people, as contrast ● Critic (and visionary) about the relationship between humans, technology, and ecology ● Integrated their values, broader work, practices, skills, income, differently at different times making “the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” Milton ## Page 16 Faith Blake Fuller “No More Secondhand God” Here is God's purpose- for God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors. 1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul. 2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are True 1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age 2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3 Energy is Eternal Delight The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Deep personal & family faith traditions. Complex and meaningful relationship with Christian and other faith & belief communities EVER RETHINKING THE LORD’S PRAYER July 12, 1979 Love is metaphysical gravity. ● By Glory I mean the synergetic totality of all physical and metaphysical radiation and of all physical and metaphysical gravity of finite but nonunitarily conceptual scenario Universe “My task was not to preach about God, but to serve God in silence about God.” “Personally, I am overwhelmed by the spiritual evidence of a greater intellect. Call it God, but a word is just a direction and so utterly inadequate to capture the meaning of this 100 percent efficient, eternally unlimited integrity. ...in whatever way we humans refer to this ‘integrity,’ it will always be an inadequate expression of its cosmic omniscience and omnipotence.” ## Page 17 Closing Words Blake Fuller I give you the end of golden string, Only wind it into a ball It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate Built in Jerusalem’s wall “Call me Trimtab” Jerusalem. The Emanation of the Giant Albion ## Page 18 Conclusion With respect to William Blake and Buckminster Fuller ●There are complex and rewarding similarities, divergences, and resonances. ●There are multiple possible perspectives to take on this juxtaposition. ●There are many salient paths of INQUIRY and ACTION. ●These slides are downloadable and citable ○DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7514368 ●This is an early communication of a complex project ●Please reach out if you want to work in this area Stable Diffusion 2.1 ## Page 19 Discussion We can go back to one of the previous areas: ●Life & Times ●Approaches & Practices ●Deep Generativity ●Full Page Creativity ●Children & Education ●Symmetries ●Four-fold Vision ●Negations & Contradictions ●Perception, Cognition, Action ●World-View ●Faith ●Closing Words Or start a juxtaposition page for a new topic, or do something else Thank you, and Onwards! ●Context ●Comprehensivity ●Conclusion ## Page 20 New topic….. Blake Fuller ## Page 21 New topic….. 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