Sintegrity

Jacinta Maria de Santana

Hello, World!

Back to the Greeks:

Syn = together, cooperation

Synergy = syn - together + ergos - work

Synergy between people, in this collective work of building knowledge and the world, which would not be the same without each of the actors and the interactions among them, and between them and with the outside world.

Here, we add to the cauldron a pinch of Complex Thought, Systems Theory, Edgar Morin, Buckminster Fuller, and other holistic theories and theorists who (re)understood that "the whole is GREATER than the sum of its parts" (as Aristotle already said — back to the Greeks, of course). But it is worth looking at this "greater" not as size or number, but as a tangle of actors, interactions, internal and external factors, and social, political, economic, cultural, etc., conditions. Complexity!

Buckminster Fuller, with his mathematical and geometric studies, converted these interactions into an energetic geometry with structural sustainability: the geodesic dome. Here, it is the tension of the whole that keeps the structure standing, not the compression of points as in conventional architecture. This tension is distributed from each node directly to five others, and indirectly to ten. Hence, Tensegrity = Tensile + Integrity, or integrity through tension?

Inevitably, there will be tensions in the construction of knowledge. Each individual carries a worldview —two, three... a thousand— as life progresses and their vision reaches new horizons. What matters is understanding that tensions are opportunities for pauses and reflection, not ruthless battlegrounds. Dialogue is essential—within the individual, the collective, and the superlative. A Synergy within Tension × Integration = Syntegrity.

Note: This is my individual version, partly academic-rational, partly romantic-poetic, of a term coined across various fields, such as International relations (Keohane and Nye, 1989), Chemistry (Maturana and Varela, 1987), Economics (Arthur, 1994; Pearce, 1994), and Social history (Bahm, 1979).^[1]

Be bold and seek for knowledge!

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