Hidden principles

In Buckminster Fuller’s introduction to Synergetics, an essay titled “The Wellspring of Reality”, he talks about how much of Humanity’s Universe is not widely understood or utilized, and that often solutions exist that few people are aware of.

When I first read the paragraph below, this struck me as an important insight, and it hinted at a potential role I could play that I had never thought of: a kind of detective looking for generalized principles in unexpected or forgotten places. I think these patterns are a realization of that early idea.

“While it takes but meager search to discover that many well-known concepts are false, it takes considerable search and even more careful examination of one’s own personal experiences and inadvertently spontaneous reflexing to discover that there are many popularly and even professionally unknown, yet nonetheless fundamental, concepts to hold true in all cases and that already have been discovered by other as yet obscure individuals. That is to say that many scientific generalizations have been discovered but have not come to the attention of what we call the educated world at large, thereafter to be incorporated tardily within the formal education processes, and even more tardily, in the ongoing political-economic affairs of everyday life. Knowledge of the existence and comprehensive significance of these as yet popularly unrecognized natural laws often is requisite to the solution of many of the as yet unsolved problems now confronting society. Lack of knowledge of the solution’s existence often leaves humanity confounded when it need not be.” — Buckminster Fuller, “The Wellspring of Reality”