World The whole-system of Earth, including all human-made and naturally occurring systems, as viewed from local (personal, community, region, nation), global (continents, oceans, land, air), and universal (solar system, cosmos) perspectives, as well as the metaphysical world(s) of individual and collective consciousness.
Cocreative In balanced, win-win-win partnership with each other (human evolution) and the inherent intelligence of nature's designing and organizing principles (involution) in full awareness of our interdependent unity as a whole, living, regenerative Universe.
Design Science The application of nature's principles of design and organization from a comprehensive, whole-system, closed-loop perspective, directed towards ever-more efficient and beautiful technological and aesthetic integrity, wherein ever-increasing numbers of Earth's human inhabitants experience a high (real wealth*) standard of living without ecological offense or the expense of anyone. The science and art of "doing more with less."**
Century Spanning five generations of human lineage; a necessary range of anticipatory trend analysis relevant to evolutionary problem-solving during this period of radical transition for humanity and Earth.
* Wealth is the capacity of a society to deal with present and future contingencies. It is the measurable degree to which we have rearranged our environment so that it is able to support as many lives, for as long as possible, in as many conditions, at a high standard of living. Design Science assumes that real wealth is generated not by the quantity of resources that can be accumulated, but by the quality of their use. The more intelligently we employ resources, the more wealth they will yield.
** Buckminster Fuller called this 'Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science', stating that it is "the effective application of the principles of science to the conscious design of our total environment in order to help make the Earth's finite resources meet the needs of all humanity without disrupting the ecological processes of the planet."
Comprehensive means dealing with whole systems, the globe, all of humanity and all of the critical variables affecting the problems and needs of Earth and her passengers. Anticipatory means preparing for a crisis in advance of its occurrence and acting for both the present and future needs of humanity. Design is an integrative process -- the synthesizing of parts into a whole. Science is the logical, systematic and empirical method of research and ordering of experience.
(* and ** both from Environmental Design Science Primer, Earth Metabolic Design, New Haven, Connecticut, 1976)
copyright©2001 Marshall Lefferts
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