326.00 Universe as Metaphysical and Physical


[326.00-326.50 Metaphysics Scenario]

326.01 The support of life on our planet consists of two kinds__metaphysical and physical. Both cosmic and terrestrial energetic regeneration, organic and inorganic, are physical; while the know-what of pure science and the know-how of applied science are both metaphysical. The know-what of science’s experimental evidence informs technology’s know-how to employ efficiently the substantive resources and synergetic metaphysical patterns progressively found to be operative in Universe. These are essential to the maintenance of life on board our planet as well as in mounting local-Universe exploring excursions from our mother-spaceship Earth.
326.02 All that is physical is energetic. All that is metaphysical is synergetic.
326.03 All the energetic physical consists of two phases__(1) energy associative as matter, and (2) energy disassociative as radiation__with each being reconvertible into the other. All the synergetic metaphysical consists of two phases__(1) subjective information acquisition by pure science exploration, and (2) objectively employed information by applied science invention.
326.04 We can refine all the tools and energy capability of single and commonwealth into two main constituents__the physical and the metaphysical. The physical consists of specific, measurable energy quantities; the metaphysical consists of specifically demonstrable know-how capabilities. Only the metaphysical can designedly organize the physical, landscape-forming events to human advantage, and do so while also maintaining
  1. the regenerative integrity of the complex ecological-physiological support of human life aboard our planet, and
  2. the integrity of the chemical-element inventory of which our planet, its biosphere and co-orbiting hydraulic, atmospheric, ozonic radiation-shielding spheres, ionosphere, Van Allen belts, and other layerings all consist.
326.05 Only the physical is alterable; the metaphysical is unalterable. All the physical is continually intertransforming in orderly ways discoverable only by the weightless metaphysical mind. The local physical systems are everywhere energy exportive, which is humanly misinterpreted to be entropic and dissynchronously expansive only because the exported energies are electromagnetically (i.e., nonsubstantially) dispatched only as information__which is purely metaphysical__to be always eventually imported as information by electromagnetic reception in elsewhere-newborn, regenerative assemblages of cosmic systems. The local exportings appear to be dissynchronous only when viewed from too short a time span to permit the tuned-in occurrence of the next synchronous moment of the eons-apart frequencies often involved in celestial electromagnetics.3
(Footnote 3: Whether communication is by telephone hook-up or by wireless radio, what you and I transmit is only weightless metaphysical information. Metaphysical, information appreciative, you and I are not the telephones nor the wire or wireless means of the metaphysical information transmitting.)
326.06 We look at the stars, and they look very randomly scattered throughout the sky. But we can say that the number of direct and unique interrelationships between all the stars is always (N2 - N) / 2. This equation demonstrates the principle of order underlying all superficially appearing disorderliness or randomness (see Sec. 227) and tells us quite clearly and simply that we are mathematically justified in assuming order to be always present despite the superficially appearing disorder. This gives us a personal sense of the order-discovering and -employing power of the weightless mind and at the same time a sense of our human anatomy's negligible magnitude in Universe when juxtaposed to the vast array of stars visible to the naked human eye. The stars observable on clear nights__the naked-eye-visible stars__constitute but a meager fraction of all the stars of our own "Milky Way" galaxy. Beyond this there is the 99.99 times greater array of the only- telescopically-visible, 200 billion other already photographically identified galaxies, each consisting of an average of 100 billion stars, all coordinately operative within a 22-billion light-year-diameter sphere of Earth-planet-mounted instrumental observation and Earthians' photographic recording. This spherical-sweepout sphere of astronomical observation by minuscule humans on Earth describes a sphere of 123-plus-21-zeros-miles in diameter, all of which adds up at the present moment to each of the four billion humans on Earth having an exclusive personal quota of 25 billion stars or suns operatively available to their energetic regeneration, just awaiting his metaphysical know-how development, with the metaphysical assurance already established that the Universe is eternally regenerative. Energy crises are crises of ignorance induced by lethal self-interest.
326.07 This cosmic-accounting analysis discloses the omniuniversal orderliness that the scientist finds always to be underlying all of the only-ignorantly-apprehended illusions of randomness. This tells us that the seeming disorder of physical entropy is only superficial and explains why metaphysical thought can always find the syntropic orderliness that cancels out all disorderliness. Disorderliness is nonthinking. Exclusively energetic brain, which stores the sensorial input data of all the special-case experiences, cannot find the synergetic interrelationships existing only between and never in any of the special-case systems considered only separately, any more than a library building in itself can find the unique interrelationships existing between the separate data that it houses. Only mind__the magnificent, weightless, metaphysical, pattern-seeking-and-apprehending function__has demonstrated the capability to intuitively apprehend and mathematically contrive the experimental means for identifying the significant, only-between-and-not-of, only mathematically expressible, eternal relationships, which altogether permit a seemingly inexhaustible variety of cosmic interrelationship patterning, and thereby human mind’s capability to participate in the ceaseless complex of orderly intertransformings in such a manner as continually to abet the human mind’s unique local-Universe functioning in maintenance of the cosmic integrity of eternal regeneration.
326.08 So long as humans progressively employ and develop their syntropic, energetic, metaphysical mind's capability to locally abet cosmic integrity, just so long will that metaphysical capability continue to operate in this particular local Universe's ecologically regenerative, planetary team aboard spaceship Earth. If, however, the entropic, energetically exploiting, antisynergetic, exclusively partisan profit motive__political or financial__continues to dominate and rule humans by force of arms, then the Earthian ecology team will become self-disqualifying for further continuance as a potentially effective local sustainer of cosmic-regeneration integrity. This is the net of what has now become metaphysically evidenced regarding the potential significance of humans aboard planet Earth. It is the nature of the contest between brain and mind. Brain is selfishly exclusive; mind is cosmically inclusive. Brain now commands the physical power to overwhelm humanity. But it is also the nature of mind’s design science capability to render all humanity physically successful, thus eliminating human preoccupation with the struggle and thereby freeing all humanity to become metaphysically preoccupied with fulfilling its cosmic-regeneration functioning.
326.09 The physical Universe is an aggregate of frequencies. The human brain’s senses are able to tune in directly only about one-millionth of the exclusively-mind- discovered and now experimentally proven and usable electromagnetic ranges of energetic reality. To this magnificent extent has the metaphysical brought humans into potential mastery of the physical. But thus far their physically most powerful political masters, misassuming ignorantly that there is fundamental inadequacy of life support, continue to exploit the fear that this induces in individuals, not for the individuals’ sake but for concern and love for their dependents. Thus individuals concerned for the welfare of their dependents fearfully yield their economic-strategy mandates to the power-wielding brains of exclusively partisan ideologists.
326.10 Precession of Side Effects and Primary Effects
326.11 In recognizing the residual ignorance of variously dominant Earthian power- structure partisans of this particular cosmic-history moment, we do not impute malevolence or wrongdoing; we are only recognizing the checks-and-balances mechanisms of nonsimultaneously occurring and only partially overlapping Scenario Universe's vast variety of local conception-to-birth gestation rates. These gestations are the product of the associative energies' frequency synchronizations as well as of the concomitant rate of local disassociative energies, the dyings-off.
326.12 In the regenerative integrity of the cosmic design the locally supportive, human mind’s understanding operative on planet Earth has to be midwife at the birth and experiential development of critical information inventorying; it must also sustain the total__Garden of Eden__ecological regenerativity as naturally accomplished by intense high-frequency information transmitted by the electromagnetics of chemical elements of the star Sun and receivingly translated by the Earth’s land-borne vegetation and water- borne algae into photosynthetic sorting, reorganizing, and combining of the planet Earth's inventory of carbon, hydrogen, and other chemical elements. Some of these energies are redistributed to the biosphere, and some reenter directly into the integral metabolic multiplication and proliferation by all biological organisms of the hydrocarbon molecules and their concomitant environmentally supportive, chemical exchanging events. To function successfully in gales and storms while exposing adequate leafage to the Sun, the dry Earthborne vegetation must send into the soil and rocks roots that draw water from the soil to cool themselves against dehydration by the heat of radiation exposure as well as to provide the vegetation with noncompressible, hydraulic structuring as well as with hydraulic distribution of the many eccentric, locally concentrated energy stressings of the vegetation's structure. Because the vegetation is rooted, it cannot reach the other vegetation to procreate. To solve this regenerative problem Universe inventively designed a vast variety of mobile creatures__such as birds, butterflies, worms and ants__to intertraffic and cross-pollinate the vast variety of vegetation involved in the biochemical refertilization complexities of ecology, as for instance does the honeybee buzz-enter the flowers to reach its honey while inadvertently cross-fertilizing the plants. Each biological specimen is structurally designed by the programmed codings of DNA-RNA and is chromosomically programmed to go directly to immediately rewarding targets while inadvertently, or unknowingly, producing (what are to it) "side effects" that inadvertently sustain the main objective of Universe, which is the sustenance of the synergetic circuitry of terrestrial ecology and thereby as well to sustain the cosmic regeneration.
326.13 Humans, like the honeybee, are born ignorant, preprogrammed with hunger, thirst, and respiratory drives to take in chemical elements in crystalline, liquid, and gaseous increments, as well as with procreativeness and parental-protectiveness drives. With their directly programmed drives humans inadvertently produce (what are to them) side effects, which results in their doing the right cosmic regenerative tasks for all the wrong reasons__or without any reason at all. This preliminary phase of preconditioned human reflexing, while lasting millions of years, is a gestative-phase behavior that becomes obsolete as humans' metaphysical mind discovers the principles of precession and discovers__only through vast, cumulative trial and error__the pattern experience of both terrestrial and cosmic ecology; whereafter humans will progressively recommit their endeavors in support of the recycling and orbitally regenerative effects, precessionally interproduced by all independently orbiting cosmic systems. This abrupt 90-degree reorientation constitutes the evolutionary stage through which humanity is now passing, wherein humanity will progressively exchange its exclusive preoccupation with self- preservation for that of supporting omniinclusive, cosmic integrity.
326.20 Pyramid of Generalizations
326.21 The physical Universe is characterized by local-system entropy, an ever- increasing, locally expansive randomness, and an ever-increasing diffusion, as all the different and nonsimultaneous transformations and reorientations occur. While the entropy and disorderliness of physically exportive Universe increase and expand, we have the metaphysical Universe countering syntropically with energy importing, orderly sorting, and comprehensive contraction and storage of energy. In the metaphysically organized, syntropic-importing phase of cosmic-energy events we have the human mind digesting and sorting out all the special case experiences and generalizing therefrom the persistent relationships existing between and not in the special characteristics of all the special cases. All the eternal, weightless principles apparently governing both the physical and metaphysical Universe are experimentally detected and digested into mathematical generalizations, of which only a very few are as yet known.
326.22 The whole process of generalizing generalizations forms a pyramid whose base consists of all the special cases of direct physical experiences. We can say, "We take a piece of rope and tense it," when we do not in fact have a rope in our hands. We have all had so many rope experiences that we can generalize our communication of the concept. This is a first-degree generalization. The discovery of always and only coexisting tension and compression is a second-degree generalization. Finding a whole family of always and only coexisting phenomena is a third-degree generalization; and conceiving therefrom “relativity” is a fourth-degree generalization.
326.23 In this pyramid of generalizations the human mind goes way beyond the biologicals in its development of the diminishing conceptual Universe__diminishing because, being progressively reduced and refined from a plurality of first-degree to a plurality of second-degree generalizations, and finally to as concise a form as E = Mc2, which may some day be even more economically expressed as it is synergetically digested into ever more comprehensive and exquisite cosmic comprehension by metaphysically evolving human minds. So we find the metaphysical not only comprehending the physical__which should have been expected__but also encompassing and omniaccounting all the physical with the tetrahedron and thereafter reducing Universe’s structural system myriadness to unity. The metaphysical, as with the circumferentially united, great-circle chord vectors of the vector equilibrium, masteringly coheres the physical by more effective use of the same quanta of energy. (See Sec. 440.08.)
326.24 Discovery of an acceptable hypothesis for explaining the role of humans as an essential metaphysical function of Universe, along with discovery of the mathematical proof of the tetrahedron as the true minimum limit structural system of Universe and its subdivision of Universe into macro- and microcosms as the sizeless conceptual system basis for generalizing general system theory, all develop as a consequence of our asking ourselves the question: How may we organize our self-disciplining on behalf of all humanity and in support of the integrity of eternal cosmic regeneration to deal comprehensively and capably with the maximum and minimum of limiting factors of the combined and complementary metaphysical and physical prime subdivisions of Universe?
326.25 The theory of functions holds for Universe itself. Universe consists at minimum of both the metaphysical and the physical. The inherent, uniquely differentiable, but constantly interproportional twoness of physical Universe was embraced in Einstein’s one-word metaphysical concept, "relativity," and in a more specific and experimentally demonstrable way in the physicists' concept of complementarity.
326.30 Comprehensive Universe
326.31 Comprehensive Universe combines both the metaphysical Universe and the physical Universe. The local physical system is the one we experience sensorially: the conceptual metaphysical system is one we never experience physically but only consider in thought. As we discover in our grand synergetic strategy, we commence all problem- solving most advantageously at the supreme, terminally comprehensive level of Universe__that is, at the generalized-principle level. Thereafter we separate out from nonunitarily conceptual Scenario Universe one single, thinkable, experientially definable, holistic concept, which definition function inadvertently discloses the inherent polyhedral geometry of all conceptually sizeless thought referencing. We go on to find out through topological mathematics how to demonstrate that the difference between the cosmically total metaphysical and physical Universe and any one experiential physical system, or any one conceptually thinkable system, is just one (positive and negative) tetrahedron, or one unity-of-twoness. This is to say that the difference between the finite (because an aggregate of finites) but nonunitarily conceptual total Scenario Universe (which we used to call infinity) and the physical Scenario Universe of energy with which physics deals, is just one finitely positive and one complementary, finitely negative tetrahedron. The exclusively conceptual metaphysical Universe is also proven to be a finite scenario because it too is an aggregate of locally terminal__ergo, finite__intellectual conceptioning experiences. The total Universe is just one (plus and minus) tetrahedron more than either the exclusively physical or exclusively metaphysical conceptualized Universe. (See Sec . 620.12.)
326.32 What man used to call infinite, I call finite, but nonunitarily conceptual__ergo, nonsimultaneously thinkable. What man used to call finite, I call definite, i.e., definable, conceptually__ergo, thinkably definable. The plus and minus, sizelessly conceivable, tetrahedral differences are all finitely and rationally calculable.
326.40 Metaphysical and Physical: Summary
Metaphysical cogitates reliably in respect to equilibrium. Physical abhors equilibrium.
That which is communicated, i.e., understood, is metaphysical. The means of communication is physical.
Metaphysical is unlimited and generalizable independent of time-space-sizing. Physical is limited, experienceable, and is always special case time space- sized.
Metaphysical is unweighable, imponderable, and cannot move an electromagnetically or mass-at-tracted, levered needle. Physical is always apprehensible by an instrument's needle leverage actuated by weight, pressure, heat, or electromagnetics.
Metaphysical discoveries clarify ever more comprehensively, inclusively, and are more economically communicable in their progressive description of the eternally changeless, and the rate of the more economic restatability continually accelerates. Physical events are ever transforming and ever more acceleratingly entropic.
Humans are metaphysical. You and I are awareness, which is the identity of the weightless life. The physical, automatedly rebuilding, information-gathering device we sensorially apprehend as our anatomy, employed by metaphysical mind, consists entirely of inanimate atoms and is therefore entirely physical.
Conceptioning is metaphysical. Sensing is physical, and the sensed is physical and always inherently special case.
Waves are metaphysical pattern integrities. Metaphysical pattern integrity waves articulate as physical phenomena such as water, air, or electromagnetic fields, and thus communicate their nonsensorially apprehensible presence through the displacement of the sensibly detectable physical phenomena.
Symmetry is metaphysical. Asymmetry is physical.
Equilibrium is metaphysical. Disequilibrium is physical.
Conceptuality is metaphysical and weightless. Reality is metaphysically conceptualized information transmitted only through physical senses. Realizations are special case physical, brain-sensed phenomena.
The metaphysical evolution of human awareness slows as it approaches the omniintegrated verity __ physically unattainable by the only-physically- sensing, anatomical machine designed specifically only for limited operation with the highly specialized local Universe conditions of the Earthian biosphere. Physical systems alone accelerate as they unravel entropically, ever approaching the speed of a noninterfered with electromagnetic, spherically expansive wave (186,000 mps.)2
The generalized conceptions of metaphysical evolution tend ever to decelerate, simplify, consolidate and ultimately unify. The special case transformings of physical evolution tend ever to accelerate, differentiate, and multiply.
Generalization is metaphysical: mind function. Design is generalized metaphysical conceptioning. Tools, artifacts, and all humanly contrived extracorporeal facilities designed by mind are always special-case, brain-processed, physically sensible phenomena.
Theoretical and applied science is conceptually metaphysical. Applied science always results in special-case, brain-sensible, limited- longevity phenomena.
Metaphysically operative mind cannot design a generalized tool of unlimited and eternal capability, which unlimited and eternal capability is manifest only in purely metaphysical, weightless principles. Principles have no beginning-ending or other temporal limitations. Principles are truths We can invent only physical. The human mind, translating the general ized principles only through special case, individual, brain-operated anatomical tools, can realize only phenomena of special case, limited capacity capability and durability.
326.50 Metaphysical and Physical: Cross-references
Sec. 162 Generalization
163 Metaphysical Experience
203.10 Synergetics
205.03 Vector Equilibrium
205.04 Frame of Reference
217.02 Prospects for Synergetics
229.10 Principle of Irreversibility
251.27 Discoveries of Synergetics
251.48 Discoveries of Synergetics
251.50 Discoveries of Synergetics Scenario Universe (Same as 217.02)
424.02 Isotropic Vector Matrix: Quantum
440.08 Vector Equilibrium
443 Vector Equilibrium as Equanimity Model
445.11 Zerophase
501.01 Symmetry & Asymmetry
502.02 Experience
521.01 Vector
526.03 Space
529.10 Future: Man Backs Into
532.14 Symmetry & Asymmetry
620.12 Tetrahedron: Quantum (Same as 424.02)
986.840 Primitive Hierarchy
1009.36 Wave vs . Particle
1013.50 Visible and Invisible Tetrahedral Arrays
1052.60 Physical Limit and Metaphysical Absolute
1075.20 Equation of Intellect

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Copyright © 1997 Estate of Buckminster Fuller