Science of Meaning

What Does A ‘Science Of Meaning' Mean?

Hard Science tells two Creation stories. One about the emergence of Space and planet Earth (Let there be Light); the other about the emergence of Animals and Plants (Let there be Life). But Science has a third Creation story to tell - about the emergence of meaning itself (Let there be Creation Stories). And this is a story that has never been told.

Inside our heads there is a vast and colourful landscape of meaning. Where did it come from? How can we explore, and chart its contours? The purpose of this website is to address these questions - in an interesting and friendly way.

A quest like this could use a guide, so we have enlisted the services of Humour. Humour plucks at the contours of our meaning to achieve the resonant effect we call laughter. In so doing, it makes these lines visible, at least for a brief moment. All we have to do is break the secret code of the joke (this has never been done before), and the underlying logic of this colourful place will be revealed. That is, as long as we avoid the traps set by our jester guide along the way. And we do have to break that code...

The pun is the favourite and, it turns out, the worst place to begin such an attempt. Puns pop up everywhere in the landscape of meaning - they are the mushrooms of coincidence, and reveal little in the way of underlying logic. Happily, this finding then leads us to two fascinating and important areas of meaning where jokes abound, and reveal a great deal: The Plateau of Copies, and The Valley of Shadows and Reflections.

Exploring the myriad of fascinating joke forms that live there is like being on a rich coral reef, except that this reef is part of the mental home inside our heads. And with this new map (never before revealed), new possibilities emerge. Can we tread the creative path ourselves, and create brand new jokes? The answer takes us to another fascinating and unexplored level in our pursuit to understand both humour, and its playground, the landscape of meaning.

Having charted a part of the world inside our heads, and having trod the creative path to new humour, we now have to ask ourselves about the bigger picture. Humans create jokes, and all other meaning, but where does meaning come from in the first place?

The engine of meaning is the imagination. It is not the opposable thumb, the bipedal stance or the invention of the soft toilet roll that gave rise to civilisation, but the evolution of the human imagination. So how did such a risky thing as the imagination evolve? And where does the reality it creates belong in the greater and indeed ultimate scheme of the universe?

Again we embark upon a quest, this time beginning with the exploits of Bugs Bunny. This allows me to formally introduce a base triplet of great analytic power - one which permeates our analysis of the areas of humour already mentioned. From this, we move into the world of animal ‘grammar', where we find various tenses from the past and present, but no subjunctive. So where did the idea of what ‘might be', and what ‘could be' arise? How indeed does the humble ‘might' of the first carriers of this new tense lead to the powerful ‘Might' of the present day human race? How did the human imagination evolve, and just how important is language in the escalation of power that this development sponsors?

Having an imagination is not enough to make us human. A superior mind without direction is merely a cipher - a being without will or values. So where does purpose come from? What gives the imagination direction? Most importantly, is there a fundamental pattern to our values, however diverse they may seem, and would that fundamental pattern be planet free? That is, does the human condition at its most fundamental apply to all forms of intelligent life, just as many of the basics of evolutionary theory look to be universal?