meaning theories

What is the meaning of meaning? We can view meaning at two levels. First, it is a cognitive process whereby we make sense of the stream of information that assails us in each moment. At a higher level, deep meaning is what we seek in life and looks for answers to such spiritual questions such as 'Why are we here?'

Here are some of the existing academic theories about how we make sense of the world, understanding meaning. Please feel free to contribute with whatever you like to this list of theories. I will appreciate it if you bring new and strange thoughts.


1. Constructivism: We try to make sense of the world by making use of constructs, which are perceptual categories that we use when evaluating things.

2. Framing: A frame is the combination of beliefs, values, attitudes, mental models, and so on which we use to perceive a situation. We effectively look through this frame in the way we would look through tinted spectacles. The frame significantly effects how we infer meaning and hence understand the situation.

3. Focussing effect: When we are making judgments, we tend to weigh attributes and factors unevenly, putting more importance on some aspects and less on others.This is typically due to factors such as stereotyping and schemas that we use that bring certain factors to mind and downplay others.

4. Schema: A schema is a mental structure we use to organize and simplify our knowledge of the world around us. We have schemas about ourselves, other people, mechanical devices, food, and in fact almost everything.

5. Personal constructs: People develop internal models of reality, called constructs in order to understand and explain the world around them in the same way that scientists develop theories. They are developed based on observation and experimentation. Constructs thus start as unstable conjecture, changing and stabilizing as more experience and proof is gained. Constructs are often defined by words, but can also be non-verbal and hard to explain.

6. Symbolic interaction: People act based on symbolic meanings they find within any given situation. We thus interact with the symbols, forming relationships around them. The goals of our interactions with one another are to create shared meaning.

7. Objectification: Complex ideas are, almost by definition, difficult to understand. To help us make sense of them, we turn them into concrete images. There are three processes by which objectification is done, giving them physical properties, turn the ideas into pictures and turn the idea into a person.

8. Speach act: Getting a glass of water is an action. Asking someone else to get you one is also an act.When we speak, our words do not have meaning in and of themselves. They are very much affected by the situation, the speaker and the listener.

9. Social interaction: In order for people in groups to talk with one another, they need a system of common understanding, in particular of concepts and ideas that are outside of 'common' understanding or which have particular meaning for that group. Words thus become imbued with special meaning within particular social groups.

10. Story models: One way in wich we explain the world around us is to create stories about it. In particular when we are face with complex situations, we will pick out what seems to be key elements and then turn these into a story.

Evolution of modern science

In recent times, and especially over the past quarter century:the following trends emerged:
1. Scientific integrity has become a live issue in public culture.
2. Academia and industry as scientific work environments have converged in all sorts of ways.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, doing science was typically more of an avocation than a job. In the 17th century, the great chemist R. Boyle not only financed his science out of his own pockets but also shared a common view that doing science as a "trade" was demeaning. Anyone who accepted money to pursue knowledge would compromise their integrity. Newton, as professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was not paid to do physical or mathematical research but to teach. The 19th century's most famous scientist, Charles Darwin, was never paid to do science. Einstein's three great papers of 1905 were not part of his job specifications. True, over the course of history,
many scientific researchers were in academic employment, but with few exceptions, before the 20th century, the job of a science professor was not to produce new knowledge but to transmit and safeguard the existing one.

The transformation of science from a calling to a job happened during the course of the past century. Indeed, science is arguably the world's youngest profession: The routinization of the paid role is less than a hundred years old; the word "scientist," coined in 1840, was not in standard usage until the early 20th century. Actually almost no one agrees with boyle in that "taking
money to do science will compromise it's integrity"..

The "engineers" and the enterprising scientists whose discoveries can be turned to cures,
power, and, of course, profit are become the most prestigious sort of practitioner, the contemporary culture heroes.

The dissolution of boundaries between academia and industry has given enormous strength to modern science: resources to do what scientists want to do, time to do it, and the reputation that comes from aligning science with the concrete goods — better communications, better health and more energy-efficient products. And if the scientists inhabiting such institutions can now make a good living that too augments the value that our sort of society grants to science.

As we enter the 21st century, new institutional configurations for doing science emerge, together with new scientific agendas and new conceptions of what it is to be a scientist. Some participants and observers of the scene celebrate these changes; others are seriously worried about them. We can be sure of only one thing: The identity of the modern scientist is, in every possible sense, a work in progres.