To really understand tensegrity, it would help to understand what is really being shown in the moving image above.
Notice the following things:
First, a bunch of sticks are connected to other sticks by some kind of string (the kind of string is not important here).
For most of us, when we say “these things are connected by a string” we are talking about how they are being kept together. We are not talking about how a string is keeping things apart from each of other.
But in that video above, the strings are keeping things both together and apart. The strings are making the object rigid. (Do an online search for images of tensegrity and you will see some amazing objects designed using the principles of tensegrity.)
“Tensegrity” is an engineering word, but it describes a lot more than mechanical things. In the world of metaphysics, we have “holism” – everything is connected. In some disciplines, the concept of interconnectedness is implicit without having a specific word that means “interconnected”. Mathematics and Linguistics are both subjects that are holistic in the sense that all aspects are interconnected.
For myself, “tensegrity” and the images we are shown to illuminate its meaning are the words and illustrations of choice.
Tensegrity is the perfect metaphor for … metaphors.
What is a metaphor? Metaphors are similes, analogies, parallels that describe something they are both different from and yet the same as.
Each stick in the video above is from all the other sticks, but each stick is connected to the other sticks. And those connections create something larger than each individual stick. Living things are great examples of tensegrity in action: Each part of you – heart, lungs, brain, blood, cells, nerves, electricity – has its own individual existence. And yet each part of you depends upon those other parts to continue to function.
Families. Friendships. Social groups. Clubs. Teams. Partnerships. Colleagues. Neighbors. Fellow citizens. All these and more form a group that illustrates tensegrity.
There is nothing new about this idea. In 1623, John Donne wrote a poetic miniature about how we are all connected. He was saying that when someone dies, we all suffer a small death in some way. “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls;” When a church bell rings to mark someone’s death, don’t ask whose death it is because “it tolls for we” – the death of any one person is a small death of each of us.
This site is built around this idea of tensegrity. We are all separate from one another. We are all connected to one another. Together we form something more than our individual selves.
Please do not make the mistake of thinking these are just mystical ramblings.
We cannot separate ourselves from the whole. Yes, we may perhaps change our relationship to the whole in the same way that that rotating object in the video changes which stick is on top, below, to the side of the other sticks; but there is a wider connectedness that is always there.
Engineers, Physicians, Surgeons, Scientists, Writers, Painters, Producers, Tennis Players, Musicians, Cooks, Parents, Children – the list is endless – all are connected and how they function as individuals depends on their connection to the whole.
My focus will seem to be on language, but it will be on a lot more. Language is a shared quality, even if we do not speak the same language. That is because we share a universe that is common to all of us, even if we describe that universe differently. If something is dangerous to anyone (such as a poison or a tsunami), it is important to be able to break through whatever language barriers exist and to point out that danger to those who matter to us (perhaps because we care about them personally or perhaps because they have the ability to mitigate that danger).
But language itself connects to other things than language. Language itself provides a metaphor (an analogy) that help us understand other subjects.