> Genius or Charlatanry? - A psychobiographical reinterpretation of the life and works of Buckminster Fuller
Actually a person can be both. I think Elon Musk is one such person.
New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
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Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#12Outlook I:
> In his working life, Fuller seems indeed to have been a charlatan whose career was mainly based on fabrication, misappropriation, pseudoscience, pretense, and imposture. The study suggests that his actions and behaviour are best understood via his fractured and grandiose personality [...]
While academics & scholars might (not an expert; didn't read the dissertation) be correct to call him a "charlatan", he sounds to me rather like modern CEO material.
Outlook II:
From a peek at his Wikipedia page -
> Buckminster Fuller was a Unitarian, and, [...] Unitarian minister. Fuller was also an early environmental activist, aware of Earth's finite resources, and promoted a principle he termed "ephemeralization", [...]
> Fuller was a pioneer in thinking globally, and explored energy and material efficiency [...]
> Though Fuller was concerned about sustainability and human survival under the existing socioeconomic system [...]
For those unfamiliar with Unitarianism - there's something of a "classic university town" Unitarian Minister stereotype here. At least historically, many highly educated and well-to-do Unitarian congregation members would expect their minister to be (or seem to be) a leading intellectual in many important-feeling fields. No mere mortal could actually do that...but if one was a fast-thinking, xenophilic, and workaholic polymath, one could keep faking it well enough to get by. More or less.
(No, this stereotype does not describe all Unitarian ministers. Especially not in the the modern era.)
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#13Plenty of Buckminster fullers' work a farm and keep to themselves.
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#14The very recent (and IMHO very good) "Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller" by Alec Nevala-Lee more or less says the same thing.
From OP abstract
> such comments surfaced once more following the publication of Fuller's latest biography, in 2022 – most intriguingly, considering its author's assertion that Fuller was, indeed, a genius
Strange, then, that the two should disagree. You say that this biography agrees with OP article, but OP article disagrees with the biography. Did I misunderstand?
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#15I don't get it. Many things he said could have been fake but some of the things were real, right? That just means he was good at idea generation. Of course the full-text is not available to me so I can't see what it says.
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#16The very recent (and IMHO very good) "Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller" by Alec Nevala-Lee more or less says the same thing.
From OP abstract > such comments surfaced once more following the publication of Fuller's latest biography, in 2022 – most intriguingly, considering its author's assertion that Fuller was, indeed, a genius Strange, then, that the two should disagree. You say that this biography agrees with OP article, but OP article disagrees with the biography. Did I misunderstand?
Good question - if the biography was a scale, it seemed overall much more tilted towards dubiousness. I wasn't left with the impression that Fuller was a genius, other than at self-promotion.
Edit: I just searched an epub version of the biography for "genius" and they all seem to reference other people talking about Fuller rather than editorial judgment. I'd have to read the thesis to see the author's fuller (ha!) interpretation of the bio.
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#17The very recent (and IMHO very good) "Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller" by Alec Nevala-Lee more or less says the same thing.
If you are interested in the history of science fiction, Nevala-Lee's other biographical works are also worth a look.
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#18Psychobiography is charlatanism / pseudoscience.
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#19I find it silly that this could be a topic of a doctoral thesis. You're a doctor of what, of knowing whether Fuller was a charlatan? Charlatanry is extremely subjective, as is genius. I guess I could see this being a Twitter rant or something, but the whole premise - that this could even be an object of academic study - is unnatural to me.
Re: New doctoral thesis proposes Buckminster Fuller was a 'charlatan'
#20I've read a bunch of his books and found both his engineering and philosophical ideas deeply inspiring and useful in my work as an engineer and scientist and in my hobby as a sailor- his deep understanding of geometry and tension, etc. has allowed me to build novel sail rigs and systems.
Fuller was awarded a huge number of patents on his inventions- and although mostly impractical, they are quite certainly new inventions of his own design.
I think it is quite likely that he was as narcissist, in that he worked hard to project an image of himself as a certain type of person, but I also think the type of creative out of the box thinker he actually was, tends to be labeled as a charlatan by people with authoritarian personalities.