Hal to Bill P. on how I arrived

CSGnet Archive CSG1993
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Chapter 1 of THE GEOMETRY is an intellectual biography introduces what
I call my odyssey of coming upon the theory. I did it in circles; I
validated it in a whole variety of ways; to me it's a matter of
simplifying (Occam's Razor) multiple realities. Meditation/reflection
played a big role in it. All at once I stopped looking at the sides
of Buckminster Fuller and it flashed on me how the edges of the
triangles might correspond to the interactive play of motives I had
discerned in the Norwegian (Germanic) term "ansvar." I had previously
built a model relating laws of liability (for corporate behavior), of
accountability (for officials) and responsibility (for underclass
young men and children). Now lecturing in Norwegian I found myself
using one word for all three, and thinking through what they had in
common as behavioral ideals. The pattern fit the form Fuller
persuaded me produced synergy as against entropy. From there it takes
only supposing that in the energy of our interaction we might sense
the difference between synergetic (life-giving) and entropic
(fearsome, lethal) patterns.

I come back to this: the test of models for me is what they can do
when applied. I never expect any of us to arrive at one model in the
same way, but we can test whether results come out as predicted. What
say? l&p hal

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[Martin Taylor 931013 11:50]
(Hal Pepinsky 8 Oct 1993 20:45:12)

I come back to this: the test of models for me is what they can do
when applied. I never expect any of us to arrive at one model in the
same way, but we can test whether results come out as predicted. What
say? l&p hal

There are models that are pictures of a situation, such as a sculpture,
and there are models that operate, such as a toy steam engine. Your models
remind me of sculpture, perhaps articulated sculture, but nevertheless
analogues of patterns you see in the larger world. To see "what they do
when applied" you have to augment them with some process that you supply
from within yourself.

PCT models incorporate process. They are still analogues of the larger
world, but the analogy includes process rather than being just pattern
to which process must be added intuitively. They are more explicit and
therefore more vulnerable to third-party test than yours seem to me to be.

Even toy steam engines can do real work. A porcelain model of a steam
engine can't. There's the difference in a nutshell.

Martin