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It seems to demonstrate that periods of industrial activity in technical syntheses of principles, data, free energy and energy as 'matter,' find highest employment by the fear-amassed credits of warfare. Therefore the assumption approaches fact that war promotes the major technical advances of civilization... What has not been clear is that the potential of this emergency-born technology has always accrued to human's prewar individual initiatives taken in a humble but irrepressible progression of assumptions, measurements, deductions, and codifications of pure science. (1947)

Buckminster Fuller#8

ScienceTechnologyIndividualWarHistory

About this quote

What does it mean?
War often drives technical advancement, but these technologies stem from humble individual scientific efforts before conflicts.
In plain terms
War uses tech, but the ideas come from individual scientists in peace.
What can you take from it?
Individual scientific progress underpins even wartime technology.

Where it applies

  • history
  • policy analysis
  • scientific study

Putting it to work

  • support basic science
  • trace tech origins
  • value peace research

Questions to consider

  • Where do new technologies really come from?
  • Does war help or hurt science?

Another view

Not all technical advances come from individual initiatives; some are state-driven.

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