About The Fuller Zone

The Fuller Zone strives to be a forum for intelligent discussion and commentary centering around the creative arts and sciences, artisanal activities, the celebration of our centuries-long shared cultural heritage of positive human achievement, the embrace of beneficial and practical intelligence in its many diverse forms, the nurturing and encouragement of the best talents and abilities of all human beings, and the radical rethinking of how society is structured with a view toward creating a vibrant, cooperative society in which all living beings can prosper, and to which all can make their most positive contributions.

As such, it is not only a meeting place of minds and hearts, but also a nexus in which many different seemingly disparate fields of human endeavor are conjoined and are seen to be related to one another, and are allowed to foster support and inspiration across many different disciplines in a positive feedback loop through which all such endeavors are thereby enriched and enlivened.

Thus, it is also meant to be a knowledge base of best practices in many different areas of human endeavor, and a place where the inner polymath in each of us may be beckoned to come out of hiding and flourish.

The essence of human culture has for many centuries been centered around the creative arts and sciences, and at best, has been informed and shaped to some degree or other by the hidden, mysterious realm of the spirit. The artistic and the scientific aspects of human endeavor are both necessary for the furthering of human potential, and they conjoin in a way in what we call technology.

Interestingly enough, technology, while usually referred to as “applied science”, has its roots in two Greek words meaning, respectively, “art, craft” (!) and “a branch of learning”. They were also conjoined in a single word, tekhnologia, which denotes “systematic treatment”. So it appears that technology is indeed a nexus where the arts and sciences meet.

Part of the proof of this is that both the creative arts and the sciences, in general, involve the systematic treatment of the areas of study and research, as well as the application thereof.

The visual arts would not be possible in the ways they have been practiced and articulated through the centuries and millenia, especially in recent times, without ever greater knowledge of the chemistry of pigments, the physics of light, the mathematics of shape, and so forth. And, as with the other creative arts, the visual arts have been graced with ideation resulting in many different theories of color, form, texture, and the like; these theories have tended to spiral in quite a number of divergent directions, which is in part why the tapestry of the visual arts is so rich.

Much the same is true of many or all of the creative arts; they all rely on scientific and technological progress, and they also, in most cases, are based on many different types of theory and research. So you can see that the link between the creative arts and sciences, in part through technology, but also via theories and research, is pretty undeniable. It also means that all such disciplines can, at best, lead to a greater understanding of the human condition and of conditional existence itself.

As for the sciences, they are similar in that many or most advances have started with a theory that occurred to someone, after which that theory was subjected to systematic treatment via the scientific method to see if the theoretical results could be proven to be the case, in such a way that those results could be replicated consistently.

So, in many or most areas of human endeavor, it is wise to promote this kind of understanding of how advances are made.

This type of understanding has practical applications in other arenas, as well, especially in those that have a tendency to affect people's lives in profound ways.

For instance, consider matters of policy and governance (usually referred to as politics and government).

(As a sidebar, bring in our friend etymology once again. To know where we are going, it can be useful to know where we have been. The roots of the word politics (“science and art of government”) are, simply stated, in a word that means “city” (polis) and a word which, in Aristotle's plural form, came to mean “affairs of state” (or “affairs of the cities” or of citizens). There's nothing particularly menacing about that, is there? And government is from a Latin word (gubernare) signifying “to direct, rule, guide, govern”; originally, “to steer, to pilot”. A ship needs someone or some group of people at the helm, n'est-ce pas?)

A final point to consider, and it's admittedly a big one, is the question of whether we should implement real standards, qualifications, and requirements for those who would hold public office in our halls of governance, along with a sister question as to whether we should apply something like the scientific method to policy matters, meaning that if certain policy positions have been proven time and time again to be demonstrably false, then they ought to be ruled out in public policy discourse as being unworkable.

If you share this vision, these ideas, about what you would like our society to look like, you are invited to join the discussion, if you are so inclined.

The Fuller Zone welcomes guest contributors to this site to weigh in on these many topics of interest or concern, and to do so with clarity and intellect and the best of intentions.

Robert Fuller

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