The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much…

The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case…. The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization.

Sourced, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975)

Other Buckminster Fuller Quotes

There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping with all the beautiful plumbing in the beautiful office buildings — and all the people sleeping in the slums. - View Quote Details on There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping…
“Those whom God hath joined together let no one put asunder.” To Anne Hewlett Fuller on this, our 63rd Wedding Anniversary and my 85 Birthday—July 12, 1980 - View Quote Details on “Those whom God hath joined together let no one put…
The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is linear. This opens up a very high order of generalizations of generalizations. The truth could not be more omni-important, although it is often manifestly operative only as a linear identification of a special-case experience on a specialized subject. - View Quote Details on The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is…
Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken seperately. - View Quote Details on Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior…
The effective decisions can only be made by the independently thinking and adequately informed human individuals and their telepathically intercommunicated wisdom–the wisdom of the majority of all such human individuals–qualifying for continuance in Universe as local cosmic problem-solvers–in love with the truth and in individually spontaneous self-commitment to absolute faith in the wisdom, integrity, and love of God, who seems to wish Earthian humans to survive. - View Quote Details on The effective decisions can only be made by the independently…
I have to say, I think that we are in some kind of final examination as to whether human beings now, with this capability to acquire information and to communicate, whether we’re really qualified to take on the responsibility we’re designed to be entrusted with. And this is not a matter of an examination of the types of governments, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with economic systems. It has to do with the individual. Does the individual have the courage to really go along with the truth? - View Quote Details on I have to say, I think that we are in…
Love is metaphysical gravity. - View Quote Details on Love is metaphysical gravity.
It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity’s fate. You can decieve others, you can decieve your brain-self, but you can’t decieve your mind-self — for mind deals only in the discovery of truth and the interrelationship of all truths. The cosmic laws with which mind deals are noncorruptible. Cosmic evolution is omniscient God comprehensively articulate. - View Quote Details on It is the integrity of each individual human that is…
Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction. - View Quote Details on Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is…
Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space…. Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship. - View Quote Details on Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in…