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SYNERGY
"Formerly unknown except to biologists and chemists, this word describes the extraordinarily important property that 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts.' In Fuller's words, 'Synergy means the behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately.' "Consider the phenomenon of gravity. The most thorough examination of any object (from pebbles to planets) by itself will not predict the surprising behavior of the attractive force between two objects, in direct proportion to the product of their masses and changing inversely with the square of the distance between them. Another dramatic example is the combination of an explosive metal and a poisonous gas to produce a harmless white powder that we sprinkle on our food-sodium chloride, or table salt. "Chrome-nickel steel, whose extraordinary strength at high temperatures enabled the development of the jet engine. Its primary constituents-iron, chromium, and nickel-have tensile strengths of 60,000, 70,000, and 80,000 pounds per square inch respectively, and combine to create an alloy with 350,000 psi tensile strength. Not only does the chain far exceed the strength of its weakest link, but counter-intuitively even outperforms the sum of its components' tensile capabilities. Thus the chain analogy falls through, calling for a new methodology which will incorporate interaugmentation. "The law of synergy, although too all-encompassing to seem a valid starting point for such an inventory, dictates a basic strategy of starting with a whole system and then investigating its parts. The most painstaking study of its separate components will never reveal the behavior of a system. All other generalized principles therefore must be subsets of this fundamental truth: the whole is not equal to the sum of its isolated parts." Amy
C. Edmondson |
