Definition: Synergy
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101.01
Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted
by the behavior of
their parts taken separately.
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102.00
Synergy means behavior of integral, aggregate, whole
systems unpredicted
by behaviors of any of their components or subassemblies
of their components taken
separately from the whole.
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103.00
A stone by itself does not predict its mass interattraction
for and by another
stone. There is nothing in the separate behavior or
in the dimensional or chemical
characteristics of any one single metallic or nonmetallic
massive entity which by itself
suggests that it will not only attract but also be attracted
by another neighboring massive
entity. The behavior of these two together is unpredicted
by either one by itself. There is
nothing that a single massive sphere will or can ever
do by itself that says it will both exert
and yield attractively with a neighboring massive sphere
and that it yields progressively:
every time the distance between the two is halved, the
attraction will be fourfolded. This
unpredicted, only mutual behavior is synergy. Synergy
is the only word in any language
having this meaning.
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104.00
The phenomenon synergy is one of the family of generalized
principles that
only co-operates amongst the myriad of special-case
experiences. Mind alone discerns the
complex behavioral relationships to be cooperative between,
and not consisting in any one
of, the myriad of brain-identified special-case experiences.
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105.00
The words synergy (syn-ergy) and energy (en-ergy)
are companions. Energy
studies are familiar. Energy relates to differentiating
out subfunctions of nature, studying
objects isolated out of the whole complex of Universe__for
instance, studying soil
minerals without consideration of hydraulics or of plant
genetics. But synergy represents
the integrated behaviors instead of all the differentiated
behaviors of nature's galaxy
systems and galaxy of galaxies.
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106.00
Chemists discovered that they had to recognize synergy
because they found
that every time they tried to isolate one element out
of a complex or to separate atoms
out, or molecules out, of compounds, the isolated parts
and their separate behaviors never
explained the associated behaviors at all. It always
failed to do so. They had to deal with
the wholes in order to be able to discover the group
proclivities as well as integral
characteristics of parts. The chemists found the Universe
already in complex association
and working very well. Every time they tried to take
it apart or separate it out, the
separate parts were physically divested of their associative
potentials, so the chemists had
to recognize that there were associated behaviors of
wholes unpredicted by parts; they
found there was an old word for it__synergy.
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107.00
Because synergy alone explains the eternally regenerative
integrity of
Universe, because synergy is the only word having its
unique meaning, and because
decades of querying university audiences around the
world have disclosed only a small
percentage familiar with the word synergy, we may conclude
that society does not
understand nature.
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108.00
Four Triangles Out of Two
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 Fig. 108.01 |
108.01
Two triangles can and frequently do associate with
one another, and in so
doing they afford us with a synergetic demonstration
of two prime events cooperating in
Universe. Triangles cannot be structured in planes.
They are always positive or negative
helixes. You may say that we had no right to break the
triangles open in order to add them
together, but the triangles were in fact never closed
because no line can ever come
completely back into itself. Experiment shows that two
lines cannot be constructed
through the same point at the same time
(see Sec. 517,
"Interference"). One line will be
superimposed on the other. Therefore, the triangle is
a spiral__a very flat spiral, but open
at the recycling point.
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108.02
By conventional arithmetic, one triangle plus one
triangle equals two
triangles. But in association as left helix and right
helix, they form a sixedged tetrahedron
of four triangular faces. This illustrates an interference
of two events impinging at both
ends of their actions to give us something very fundamental:
a tetrahedron, a system, a
division of Universe into inside and outside. We get
the two other triangles from the rest
of the Universe because we are not out of this world.
This is the complementation of the
Universe that shows up time and again in the way structures
are made and in the way
crystals grow. As separate actions, the two actions
and resultants were very unstable, but
when associated as positive and negative helixes, they
complement one another as a stable
structure. (See Sec. 933.03.)
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108.03
Our two triangles now add up as one plus one equals
four. The two events
make the tetrahedron the four-triangular-sided polyhedron.
This is not a trick; this is the
way atoms themselves behave. This is a demonstration
of synergy. Just as the chemists
found when they separated atoms out, or molecules out,
of compounds, that the separate
parts never explained the associated behaviors; there
seemed to be "lost" energies. The
lost energies were the lost synergetic interstabilizations.
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109.00
Chrome-Nickel-Steel
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109.01
Synergy alone explains metals increasing their strengths.
All alloys are
synergetic. Chrome-nickel-steel has an extraordinary
total behavior. In fact, it is the high
cohesive strength and structural stability of chrome-nickel-steel
at enormous temperatures
that has made possible the jet engine. The principle
of the jet was invented by the squid
and the jellyfish long ago. What made possible man's
use of the jet principle was his ability
to concentrate enough energy and to release it suddenly
enough to give him tremendous
thrust. The kinds of heat that accompany the amount
of energies necessary for a jet to fly
would have melted all the engines of yesterday. Not
until you had chrome-nickel-steel was
it possible to make a successful jet engine, stable
at the heats involved. The jet engine has
changed the whole relationship of man to the Earth.
And it is a change in the behavior of
the whole of man and in the behavior of whole economics,
brought about by synergy.
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109.02
In chrome-nickel-steel, the primary constituents are
iron, chromium, and
nickel. There are minor constituents of carbon, manganese,
and others. It is a very popular
way of thinking to say that a chain is no stronger than
its weakest link. That seems to be
very logical to us. Therefore, we feel that we can predict
things in terms of certain minor
constituents of wholes. That is the way much of our
thinking goes. If I were to say that a
chain is as strong as the sum of the strengths of its
links, you would say that is silly. If I
were to say that a chain is stronger than the sum of
the strengths of all of its links, you
might say that that is preposterous. Yet that is exactly
what happens with chrome-nickel-
steel. If our regular logic held true, then the iron
as the weakest part ought to adulterate
the whole: since it is the weakest link, the whole thing
will break apart when the weakest
link breaks down. So we put down the tensile strength
of the commercially available
iron__the highest that we can possibly accredit is about
60,000 pounds per square inch
(p.s.i.); of the chromium it is about 70,000 p.s.i.;
of the nickel it is about 80,000 p.s.i. The
tensile strengths of the carbon and the other minor
constituents come to another 50,000
p.s.i. Adding up all the strengths of all the links
we get 260,000 p.s.i. But in fact the tensile
strength of chrome-nickel-steel runs to about 350,000
p.s.i. just as a casting. Here we
have the behavior of the whole completely unpredicted
by the behavior of the parts.
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109.03
The augmented coherence of the chrome-nickel-steel
alloy is accounted for
only by the whole complex of omnidirectional, intermass-attractions
of the crowded-
together atoms. The alloy chrome-nickel-steel provides
unprecedented structural stability
at super-high temperatures, making possible the jet
engine one of the reasons why the
relative size of our planet Earth, as comprehended by
humans, has shrunk so swiftly. The
performance of the alloy demonstrates that the strength
of a chain is greater than the sum
of the strengths of its separate links. Chrome-nickel-steel's
weakest part does not
adulterate the whole, allowing it to be "dissolved"
as does candy when the sugar dissolves.
Chains in metal do not occur as open-ended lines. In
the atoms, the ends of the chains
come around and fasten the ends together, endlessly,
in circular actions. Because atomic
circular chains are dynamic, if one link breaks, the
other mends itself.
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109.04
When we break one link of a circular chain continuity,
it is still one piece of
chain. And because atomic circular chains are dynamic,
while one link is breaking, the
other is mending itself. Our metal chains, like chrome-nickel-steel
alloys, are also
interweaving spherically in a number of directions.
We find the associated behaviors of
various atoms complementing each other, so that we are
not just talking about one thing
and another one thing, but about a structural arrangement
of the atoms in tetrahedral
configurations .
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 Fig. 110.00 |
110.00
We take one tetrahedron and associate it with another
tetrahedron. Each of
the two tetrahedra has four faces, four vertexes, and
six edges. We interlock the two
tetrahedra, as illustrated, so that they have a common
center of gravity and their two sets
of four vertexes each provide eight vertexes for the
corners of a cube. They are
interpositioned so that the vertexes are evenly spaced
from each other in a symmetrical
arrangement as a structurally stable cube .
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111.00
Each of those vertexes was an energy star. Instead
of two separate
tetrahedra of four stars and four stars we now have
eight stars symmetrically equidistant
from the same center. All the stars are nearer to each
other. There are eight stars in the
heavens instead of four. Not only that, but each star
now has three stars nearer to it than
the old stars used to be. The stars therefore interattract
one another gravitationally in
terms of the second power of their relative proximity__in
accordance with Newton's law
of gravity. As the masses are getting closer to each
other, synergy is increasing their
power of interattraction very rapidly.
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112.00
The distance between the stars is now in terms of
the leg instead of the
hypotenuse. The second power of the hypotenuse is equal
to the sums of the second
powers of the legs, so we suddenly discover how very
much more of an attraction there is
between each star to make each one more cohesive in
the second power augmentation.
There was no such augmentation predicted by the first
power addition. Thus, it is no
surprise to discover that the close interassociation
of the energy stars gives us a
fourfolding of the tensile strength of our strongest
component of the alloy chrome-nickel-
steel of 350,000 p.s.i. in relation to nickel's 80,000
p.s.i. Gravity explains why these
metals, when in proper association, develop such extraordinary
coherence, for we are not
really dealing in a mystery__outside of the fact that
we are dealing in the mystery of how
there happened to be gravity and how there happened
to be Universe. How there
happened to be Universe is certainly a great mystery__there
is no question about
that__but we are not dealing with any miracle here outside
of the fact that Universe is a
miracle.
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113.00
When we take two triangles and add one to the other
to make the
tetrahedron, we find that one plus one equals four.
This is not just a geometrical trick; it is
really the same principle that chemistry is using inasmuch
as the tetrahedra represent the
way that atoms cohere. Thus we discover synergy to be
operative in a very important way
in chemistry and in all the composition of the Universe.
Universe as a whole is behaving in
a way that is completely unpredicted by the behavior
of any of its parts. Synergy reveals a
grand strategy of dealing with the whole instead of
the tactics of our conventional
educational system, which starts with parts and elements,
adding them together locally
without really understanding the whole.
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114.00
It is a corollary of synergy
(see Sec. 140.00)
that once
you start dealing with the
known behavior of the whole and the known behavior of
some of the parts, you will quite
possibly be able to discover the unknown parts. This
strategy has been used__in rare
breakthroughs__very successfully by man. An example of
this occurred when the Greeks
developed the law of the triangle: the sum of the angles
is always 180 degrees, and there
are six parts (three edges and three vertexes__forming
three angles); thus the known
behavior of the whole and the known behavior of two
of the parts may give you a clue to
the behavior of the other part.
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115.00
Newton's concept of gravity also gave him the behavior
of the whole. Other
astronomers said that if he were right, they should
be able to explain the way the solar
system is working. But when they took the masses of
the known planets and tried to
explain the solar system, it didn't work out. They said
you need two more planets, but we
don't have them. There are either two planets we cannot
see or Newton is wrong. If he
was right, someday an astronomer with a powerful telescope
would be able to see
sufficient distance to pick up two more planets of such
and such a size. In due course, they
were found. The known behavior of the whole explained
in terms of gravity and the
known behavior of some of the parts permitted the prediction
of the behavior of some of
the other__at that time unknown__parts.
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116.00
Physicists had predicated their grand strategies upon
the experience of trying
to make something like a perpetual motion machine. They
found that all local machines
always had friction, therefore energies were always
going out of the system. They call that
entropy: local systems were always losing energy to
the rest of the Universe. When the
physicists began to look at their total experience instead
of at just one of their experiences,
they found that while the energy may escape from one
system, it does not go out of the
Universe. It could only disassociate in one place by
associating in another place. They
found that this was experimentally true, and finally,
by the mid-19th century, they dared to
develop what they called the Law of Conservation of
Energy, which said that no energy
could be created and no energy could be lost. Energy
is finite. Physical Universe is finite.
Physical Universe is just as finite as the triangle
of 180 degrees.
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117.00
Dealing with a finite whole in terms of our total
experience has taught us
that there are different kinds of frequencies and different
rates of reoccurrence of events.
Some events reoccur very rapidly. Some are large events,
and some small events. In a
finite Universe of energy, there is only so much energy
to expend. If we expend it all in
two big booms, they are going to be quite far apart:
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