Buckminster Fuller Versus The Irrational : A Double Entendre (Dedicated to the Memory of R. Buckminster Fuller in the Centenary of his Birth)

R. Buckminster Fuller strongly believed in the discreteness of structure, and distrusted irrational numbers. The concept of limited resolution is introduced to relate a discrete structural model to mathematical abstractions such as straight lines and circles. Fuller also made rational approximations to irrational expressions. It is shown that such approximations are unnecessary, and in point of fact at odds with Fuller's spatial rather than linear thinking. Some fundamental principles underlying…