1-7
8-14
15-21
22-28
29-35
36-42
43-49
50-56
57-63
64-70
71-77
78-84
85-91
92-98
99-105
himself to feel how it hurts.
should be governed is none else but you. One who you think should be
tortured is none else but you. One who you think should be enslaved is none
else but you. One who you think should be killed is none else but you. A sage
is ingenuous and leads his life after comprehending the parity of the killed
and the killer. Therefore, neither does he cause violence to others nor does he
make others do so.
fond of pleasure and averse from pain. Suppose someone should rob me of my
life... it would not be a thing pleasing and delightful to me. If I, in my turn,
should rob of his life one fond of his life, not wanting to die, one fond of
pleasure and averse from pain, it would not be a thing pleasing or delightful to
him. For a state that is not pleasant or delightful to me must also be to him also;
and a state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon
another?
creatures and he encourages others so to abstain, and speaks in praise of so
abstaining.
condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot."
Thereupon he repulsed him with the rod which was in his hand. When he
went to Hillel, he said to him, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your
neighbor: that is the whole Torah; all the rest of it is commentary; go and learn."
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is
like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments
depend all the law and the prophets."
Andrew Wilson, Editor, World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts, United
Communities of Spirit, 1991 — Internet: http://origin.org/ws/theme015.cfm
created a unique
scupture. it was composed of wooden sticks and continuous strand of cord holding the
sculpture together. Snelson referred to it as the X-Piece.
Fuller realized it demonstrated a powerful principle for how nature organized herself.
term to Tensegrity. Later this same technique — of using the continuous pullof a cable
and many individual metal struts-discontinuous push— would be woven together to
create towering masts.
stability. Donald Ingber, an associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School
describes tension integrities or tensegrities:
Snelson's elegant sculptures, structural members that can bear only tension are
distinct from those that bear compression. Even before one of these structures is
subjected to an external force, all the structural members are already in tension or
compression — that is, they are prestressed. Within the structure, the
compression-bearing rigid struts stretch, or tense, the flexible, tension-bearing
members, while those tension-bearing members compress the rigid struts. These
counteracting forces, which equilibrate throughout the structure, are what enable
it to stabilize itself."38
Color Photographs by Christopher Rywalt
Buckminster Fuller, the master of synergic science, at once set about examining his
student's invention. Fuller explained tensegrities were a class of structures, of which
Snelson's invention was a single example. He went on to study this class of structures
intensively. In his description of Snelson's invention, Fuller explained:
Donald E. Ingber, The Architecture of Life, Scientific American Magazine, January 1998
within the single cable that was woven about the hundreds of metal compression
struts to create a metal tower. All forces within the system are instantly and
continuously distributed over the single cable to be loaded equally on all the
struts. This makes a tensegrity enormously strong with no theoretical limit to
structural height. The structure was wondrous to behold as from just a few feet
back one couldn't see the cable and the metal struts seemed stacked on nothing
rising into the sky without visible support.
same structure. Aluminum tubes, for example, are the compressive forces and are
separated by thin metal wires which are all in tension. The continuous pull of the
wires is resisted by the discontinuous tubes— discontinuous
compression/continuous tension — illustrating tensional integrity, or
tensegrity." Fuller continued, "Structures built according to tensegrity theory
become stronger as their size increases and could, theoretically, cover limitless
areas — even the entire earth."39
tensegrity of tensegrities. And, that the organizational pattern called tensegrity would be
found to be life's primary organizing tool. This is the pattern that allows win-win
relationships between the parts of the whole system. Unknown to me, another scientist-
physician Donald E. Ingberwas also studying tensegrity. Dr Ingber is now a member of
the Department of Pathology and Surgery at Harvard Medical School, his comments
continue as follows with my annotations incolor:
individual members but because of the way the entire structure distributes and
balances mechanical stresses. The geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller, are
basically frameworks made up of rigid struts, each of which can bear tension or
compression. The struts that make up the framework are connected into triangles,
pentagons or hexagons, and each strut is oriented so as to constrain each joint to a
fixed position, thereby assuring the stability of the whole structure.
continuously transmitted across all structural members. In other words, an
increase in tension in one of the members results in increased tension in members
R. Buckminster FullerBUCKMINSTER FULLER—An Autobiographical Monologue/Scenario, 1980
in tension is balanced by an increase in compression within certain members
spaced throughout the structure. In this way, the structure stabilizes itself
through a mechanism that Fuller described as continuous tension and local
compression. In contrast, most buildings derive their stability from continuous
compression because of the force of gravity.
at Yale University. There my studies of cell biology and also of sculpture led me
to realize that the question of how living things form has less to do with chemical
composition than with architecture. The molecules and cells that form our tissues
are continually removed and replaced; it is the maintenance of pattern and
architecture, I reasoned, that we call life.
bacterium or a baboon, develops through an incredibly complex series of
interactions involving a vast number of different components. These components,
or subsystems, are themselves made up of smaller molecular components, which
independently exhibit their own dynamic behavior, such as the ability to catalyze
chemical reactions. Yet when they are combined into some larger functioning unit
— such as a cell or tissue — utterly new and unpredictable properties emerge,
including the ability to move, to change shape and to grow.
discount it in their quest to explain life's fundamentals. For the past several
decades, biologists have attempted to advance our understanding of how the
human body works by defining the properties of life's critical materials and
molecules, such as DNA, the stuff of genes. Indeed, biologists are now striving to
identify every gene in the complete set, known as the genome, that every human
being carries. Because genes are the "blueprints" for the key molecules of life,
such as proteins, this Holy Grail of molecular biology will lead in the near future
to a catalogue of essentially all the molecules from which a human is created.
Understanding what the parts of a complex machine are made of, however, does
little to explain how the whole system works, regardless of whether the complex
system is a combustion engine or a cell. In other words, identifying and
describing the molecular puzzle pieces will do little if we do not understand the
rules for their assembly.