(…) What do we think of when we hear the word “meaning ether?” Probably not nearly enough — myself included! — for it is difficult to grasp what the term “meaning” signifies here. With respect to the chemical ether we had to refer to the numerical laws and to the Harmony of the Spheres. To the meaning ether, however, belongs the general and great harmony of the universe (as Kepler has expressed it). It can help us yet further if we consider a word which was used by the profound translator of many works of Chinese literature, Richard Wilhelm. He has chosen to translate the word “tao,” as used in the “Tao te Ching,” (“Tao” is translated into English as “way.”) with the German word “Sinn” (sense, or meaning). He points out that it had something of the same meaning as did the Greek word “logos” at the turning point of time, the beginning of the Christian era. If you consult a Greek dictionary, you will find a long list of meanings for the term “logos” — word, speech, computation, relationship, reason, etc. The mathematicians of 400 B.C. used the word “logos” when they stated a ratio, as 3:4. And when in the time of Plato it was established that there was no “logos,” or integral proportionality, between the diagonal and the side of a square, that was called an “a-logon,” or something without logos. Translated into Latin, logos became “ratio,” and something without “ratio” (or proportion) was something “irrational.” The discovery of the irrational in the time of Plato consisted in the proof that “irrationality” exists in the world of measure. That gives a faint indication of the paradox inherent in the deepest “sense of the word ‘sense’.”
But now you must understand that the negative mirror image of a mastery of the world of meaning, of the logos, must appear in our time, and where this negative image appears it is today called “information.” The “Science of Information” can only measure the quantitative aspect of information, and not that which is its true meaning.
by Georg Unger, 1978 (online)
TimeSpace Warps 