[Edu-sig] RE: Concentric hierarchy / hypertoon (was pygame etc.)

[Kirby Urner]

> No major mind damage is going to be done by a different presentation.
> 
> But I would like to disassociate the notion of geometry and the regularity
> of forms as completely and as early as possible. And this is where I seem
> to be most non-Fullerian.
> 
> Art
> 

Not claiming to follow, but yes, we appear to diverge here.  

The thing is, we don't disassociate "playing with blocks" from architecture,
and by extension from geometry, at all, in current childhood education.  We
most intimately link a rectilinear format, with various cylinders, cones and
balls, into the young (very young) imagination.  Cubes are both prevalent
and regular, without any doing from me.

So Fuller's innovation is *not* with respect to linking shapes and geometry
early (regular shapes included, in the form of blocks, toys using them), but
in the particular assortment of shapes and their canonical relationships.
It's much more 60 degree than we're used to (what with all the equiangular
triangles everywhere), from a classical western perspective, which is more
90 degree, more into post and lintel perpendicularity.

So where I think Fuller and our concentric hierarchy challenges the status
quo is in the manifest non-rectilinearity of this approach (NOT that this
conflicts with Euclid in any way -- it really doesn't, except when we get
into abstruse territory, such as absolute and infinite continua versus
discrete and definite manifolds and such (analog vs. discrete stuff)).  

My view is he went up against a huge bias, but since he based himself
outside of academia, in a sort of business world place, it wasn't like he
could be shut out of the game.  He was independently capable of mobilizing a
large network.  This has relevance in that a lot of what we call the open
source movement may be traced to his anticipatory design science revolution
concepts of the 1970s and 80s.  Engineering and a focus on artifacts trumps
political efforts to block basic innovations in math teaching.  There's
really no stopping us, politically speaking (because we really don't care
about politics that much (like, we're popular already)).

Kirby