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  28. blogging 22
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  31. boredom 9
  32. Botton, Alain de 38
  33. Brand, Stewart 4
  34. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  35. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  36. Broskoski, Charles 6
  37. brutalism 7
  38. building 16
  39. bureaucracy 12
  40. Burnham, Bo 9
  41. business 15
  42. Byron, Lord 14
  43. Cagan, Marty 8
  44. Calvino, Italo 21
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  46. care 6
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  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 16
  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Clark, Robin 3
  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
  60. code 20
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  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
  70. construction 9
  71. content 9
  72. Corbusier, Le 13
  73. Coyier, Chris 4
  74. craft 66
  75. creativity 59
  76. crime 9
  77. Critchlow, Tom 5
  78. critique 10
  79. Cross, Nigel 12
  80. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
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  84. cycles 7
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  88. data 8
  89. death 38
  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
  92. design 131
  93. details 31
  94. Dickinson, Emily 9
  95. Dieste, Eladio 4
  96. discovery 9
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  98. Dorn, Brandon 11
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  100. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  101. Duany, Andres 18
  102. Eatock, Daniel 4
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  104. efficiency 7
  105. Eisenman, Peter 8
  106. Eliot, T.S. 14
  107. emotion 8
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  110. Eno, Brian 4
  111. ethics 14
  112. euphony 38
  113. Evans, Benedict 4
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  118. features 25
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  121. Flexner, Abraham 8
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  124. Fowler, Martin 4
  125. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  126. friendship 6
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  128. function 31
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  132. Garfunkel, Art 6
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  135. goals 9
  136. Gombrich, E. H. 4
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  138. Graham, Paul 37
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  168. information 42
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  171. interaction 10
  172. interest 10
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  174. intuition 8
  175. invention 10
  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
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  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
  183. Jacobs, Alan 5
  184. Jobs, Steve 20
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  186. Kahn, Louis 4
  187. Kakuzō, Okakura 23
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  190. Keller, Jenny 10
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  232. Miller, J. Abbott 10
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  234. minimalism 10
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  236. Mod, Craig 15
  237. modularity 6
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  240. Murakami, Haruki 21
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  242. Müller, Boris 7
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Meaning

Close
  • The work is what it means

    It is desirable to bear in mind—when dealing with the human maker at any rate—that his chosen way of revelation is through his works. To persist in asking, as so many of us do, “What did you mean by this book?” is to invite bafflement: the book itself is what the writer means.

    Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
    1. ​​The meaning of music​​
    2. ​​No more than a sketch​​
    3. ​​On 'The Master and His Emissary'​​
    4. ​​Only a mind opened to the quality of things​​
    5. ​​Translation is always a treason​​
    • meaning
    • art
  • The meaning of objects

    The meaning of objects is harder to grasp than that of words.

    The Interpretation of Microstructures of Metallic Artifacts
    • meaning
    • objects
  • The meaning of music

    Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.

    What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.

    David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress
    1. ​​The work is what it means​​
    2. ​​No more than a sketch​​
    3. ​​On 'The Master and His Emissary'​​
    • meaning
    • music
  • A creature of bones, not words

    In building connections, [articulation work] builds meaning and identity, sorting out ontologies on the fly rather than mixing and matching between fixed and stable entities. Articulation lives first and foremost in practice, not representation; as its proper etymology suggests, it's a creature of bones, not words. When articulation fails, systems seize up, and our sociotechnical worlds become stuff, arthritic, unworkable.

    Steven J. Jackson, Rethinking Repair
    • meaning

    "Articulation Work" here refers to the concept as defined by Susan Leigh Star and Anselm Strauss (1999).

  • The shape of the sentence

    You've been taught to overlook the character of the prose in front of you in order to get at its meaning.
    You overlook the shape of the sentence itself for the meaning it contains,
    Which means that while you were reading,
    All those millions of words passed by
    Without teaching you how to make sentences.

    Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing
    • meaning
    • structure
  • To build a folly

    To build a folly is essentially to do something a second time, something at an inopportune moment. That something is always the memory of something forgotten, about which we can paradoxically say "There it is again."

    Follies were misunderstood, purposeless constructions. They were often only small, extravagant gestures in a garden, easily whisking off the imagination to distant lands, a sort of time capsule built to awaken the memory and induce surprise in passers-by. They marked locations, organized secondary paths in a park, or simply predicted the arrival of better times—a demarcation, a sacred spot, a mysterious trail, a hill whose tragic rocky nature begged for a tower, a party, or the arrival of summer.

    Smiljan Radić, Death at Home
    1. ​​Designed to be ruins​​
    2. ​​Follies​​
    3. ​​Thermal aediculae​​
    • meaning
    • purpose
    • construction
  • Let the meaning choose the word

    What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around.

    Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.

    Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality: From AI to Zombies
    • meaning
    • words
  • Taboo your words

    Albert says that people have “free will.” Barry says that people don’t have “free will.” Well, that will certainly generate an apparent conflict. Most philosophers would advise Albert and Barry to try to define exactly what they mean by “free will,” on which topic they will certainly be able to discourse at great length. I would advise Albert and Barry to describe what it is that they think people do, or do not have, without using the phrase “free will” at all.

    Eliezer Yudkowsky, Rationality: From AI to Zombies
    • meaning
  • The arbitrariness of the sign

    A key difference between verbal language and the modernist ideal of a visual “language” is the arbitrariness of a verbal sign, which has no natural, inherent relationship to the concept it represents. The sound of the word “horse”, for example, does not innately resemble the concept of a horse. Ferdinand de Saussure called this arbitrariness the fundamental feature of the verbal sign. The meaning of a sign is generated by its relationship to other signs in the language: the sign’s legibility lies in its difference from other signs.

    Ellen Lupton & J. Abbott Miller, The ABC's of ▲■●: The Bauhaus and Design Theory
    1. ​​Gods of the Word​​
    • sound
    • meaning
    • language

    In Gods of the Word, Margaret Magnus suggests that verbal language is not arbitrary – that sounds do have inherent meaning.

  • The eye does not see

    The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things.

    Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
    • meaning
    • seeing
    • images

    Cities & Signs 1

  • The utter nothingness of being

    Everything written symbols can say has already passed by. They are like tracks left by animals. That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept that writings are final. The aim is to reach true being by means of those tracks, those letters, those signs - but reality itself is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks. It doesn’t come to us by way of letters or words. We can go toward it, by following those words and letters back to what they came from. But so long as we are preoccupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle.

    "But when we give up symbols and opinions, aren’t we left in the utter nothingness of being?"

    Yes.

    Kimura Kyūho, On the Mysteries of Swordsmanship
    1. ​​The Elements of Typographic Style​​
    • zen
    • meaning
    • symbols
    • being
    • reality
  • Whereof one cannot speak

    My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

    He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

    Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

    Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    1. ​​What can be put into words​​
    • meaning
  • The quality without a name

    There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.

    There are words we use to describe this quality:

    alive
    whole
    comfortable
    free
    exact
    egoless
    eternal

    But in spite of every effort to give this quality a name, there is no single name which captures it.

    Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
    1. ​​No words to describe​​
    • beauty
    • life
    • meaning
    • spirit
  • Not knowing quite what they mean

    "Do you understand all the symbolism?"

    "Not really, besides its being Venus and Cupid."

    "I didn't even know that, so you're one up on me. I wish I'd read more about ancient mythology," she continued. "But actually, I like looking at things and not knowing quite what they mean."

    Alain de Botton, On Love
    • meaning
  • Things cannot be other than as they are

    “It is demonstrably true that things cannot be other than as they are. For, everything having been made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose.” — Professor Pangloss

    Voltaire, Candide
    • purpose
    • meaning
  • 50 reds

    If one says “Red” (the name of a color)
    and there are 50 people listening,
    it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.
    And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.

    Josef Albers, Interaction of Color
    • perception
    • meaning
  • No words to describe

    If there is no term for something, it might be thought that the commodity is of small importance. But it is just as likely that this something is of such importance that it is taken for granted, and thus any conveniences, like words, for discussing it are unnecessary.

    Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics
    1. ​​The quality without a name​​
    2. ​​This is Water​​
    • meaning
    • words
  • That is not it at all

    It is impossible to say just what I mean!
    But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
    Would it have been worth while
    If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
    And turning toward the window, should say:

    That is not it at all,
    That is not what I meant, at all.

    T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
    • meaning
  • A soft and fitful luster

    Who decided that the American public couldn’t handle “a soft and fitful luster”? I can’t help but think something has been lost. “A soft sparkle from a wet or oily surface” doesn’t just sound worse, it actually describes the phenomenon with less precision. In particular it misses the shimmeriness, the micro movement and action, “the fitful luster,” of, for example, an eye full of tears — which is by the way far more intense and interesting an image than “a wet sidewalk.”

    It’s as if someone decided that dictionaries these days had to sound like they were written by a Xerox machine, not a person, certainly not a person with a poet’s ear, a man capable of high and mighty English, who set out to write the secular American equivalent of the King James Bible and pulled it off.

    James Somers, You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary
    • meaning
    • words
  • Reference and Is-ness

    There are at least two aspects to what we have traditionally called the meaning of a word. One aspect is reference, and the other is something I will call ‘inherent meaning’ following Ullman (1963). Inherent meaning is ‘Is-ness’ meaning. Inherent meaning is a word’s identity, and reference merely its resumé, where it has gone and what it has done, an itemization of its contexts. ‘Is-ness’ is unifying. Each word has a single pronunciation, a single inherent meaning. But reference is divisive. It makes what was one thing – the word – appear to be many things – its senses. It is inherent meaning which gives all those multifarious senses the power of being a single word.

    Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word
    • meaning
    • words
  • The demand of a new word

    Why are these phonosemantic classes enough, and we need neither more nor less? Why are these consonants enough, and we need neither more nor less? What determines the need for a new word? How is this demand ‘felt’ by a language? How did the metabolic pathways of American English recognize that ‘jerk’ and ‘twerp’ and ‘punk’ and ‘nitwit’ and ‘dork’ and ‘ass’ and ‘goon’ and ‘twit’ and ‘dodo’ and ‘bum’ and ‘nerd’ and ‘dunce’ and ‘turd’ and ‘boob’ and ‘chump’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘bastard’ and ‘prude’ and so on and so forth simply were not equal to the task? We had to add ‘turkey’ and ‘squirrel’ as well?

    Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word
    • words
    • language
    • meaning
  • Apparency

    Half a century ago, Stern discussed this attribute of an artistic object and called it apparency. While art is not limited to this single end, he felt that one of its two basic functions was "to create images which by clarity and harmony of form fulfill the need for vividly comprehensible appearance." In his mind, this was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning.

    Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
    • art
    • meaning
    • images
    • harmony
    • form
  • Fish and water

    How does one speak about something that is both fish and water, means as well as end?

    Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology
    • meaning
    • words
  • The word invents itself

    Posits certain neologisms as arising from their own cultural necessity—his words, I believe. Yes, he said. When the kind of experience that you're getting a man-sized taste of becomes possible, the word invents itself.

    David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
    • words
    • meaning
    • novelty
    • invention
  • AI-art isn’t art

    An Essay by Erik Hoel
    erikhoel.substack.com

    AI-generated artwork is the same as a gallery of rock faces. It is pareidolia, an illusion of art, and if culture falls for that illusion we will lose something irreplaceable. We will lose art as an act of communication, and with it, the special place of consciousness in the production of the beautiful.

    …Just as how something being either an original Da Vinci or a forgery does matter, even if side-by-side you couldn’t tell them apart, so too with two paintings, one made by a human and the other by an AI. Even if no one could tell them apart, one lacks all intentionality. It is a forgery, not of a specific work of art, but of the meaning behind art.

    • art
    • consciousness
    • beauty
    • meaning
    • ai
  • The Future Is Not Only Useless, It’s Expensive

    An Article by Dan Brooks
    www.gawker.com

    This is how NFTs make me feel: like the future is useless but expensive, and world-altering technology is now in the hands of a culture so aesthetically and spiritually impoverished that it should maybe go back to telling stories around the cooking fire for a while, just to remember how to mean something.

    1. ​​A particular deficiency of which they all partake​​
    • technology
    • futurism
    • meaning
  • The Gifted Listener: Composer Aaron Copland on Honing Your Talent for Listening to Music

    An Article by Maria Popova
    www.brainpickings.org

    The poetry of music, Copland intimates, is composed both by the musician, in the creation of music and its interpretation in performance, and by the listener, in the act of listening that is itself the work of reflective interpretation. This makes listening as much a creative act as composition and performance — not a passive receptivity to the object that is music, but an active practice that confers upon the object its meaning: an art to be mastered, a talent to be honed.

    1. ​​Music and Imagination​​
    2. ​​To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees​​
    3. ​​The core assertion​​
    • music
    • poetry
    • art
    • meaning
  • On 'The Master and His Emissary'

    A Quote by Ian McGilchrist
    www.ttbook.org

    People who make works of art, whatever they might be, have gone to great trouble to make something unique which is embodied in the form that it is, and not in any other form, and that it transmits things that remain implicit

    ...Works of art are not just disembodied, entirely abstract, conceptual things. They are embodied in the words they’re in or in paint or in stone or in musical notes or whatever it might be.

    1. ​​The work is what it means​​
    2. ​​The meaning of music​​
    3. ​​If a book can be summarized, is it worth reading?​​
    • art
    • material
    • meaning
    • form
  • A brief foray into vectorial semantics

    An Article by James Somers
    jsomers.net

    One of the best (and easiest) ways to start making sense of a document is to highlight its “important” words, or the words that appear within that document more often than chance would predict. That’s the idea behind Amazon.com’s “Statistically Improbable Phrases”:

    Amazon.com’s Statistically Improbable Phrases, or “SIPs”, are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book.

    • math
    • meaning
    • words
    • notetaking
    • search
    • chance
  • The way an oyster does

    A Fragment by Kay Ryan
    www.csmonitor.com

    Her poems, [Kay Ryan] says, don't begin with a simple image or sound, but instead start "the way an oyster does, with an aggravation." An old saw may nudge her repeatedly, such as "It's always darkest before the dawn" or "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

    "I think, 'What about those chickens?' " she says, "and I start an investigation of what that means. Poets rehabilitate clichés."

    • poetry
    • meaning
    • cliché

    From "Poet Kay Ryan: A profile" by Elizabeth Lund.

  • The primacy of interpretation over sensation

    A Fragment by Mark Liberman
    languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

    Our memory of exact word sequences usually fades more quickly than our memory of (contextually interpreted) meanings.

    More broadly, the exact auditory sensations normally fade very quickly; the corresponding word sequences fade a bit more slowly; and the interpreted meanings last longest.

    These generalizations can be overcome to some extent if the sound or the text has especially memorable characteristics. (And the question of what "memorable" means in this context is interesting.)

    • memory
    • senses
    • meaning
    • speech
    • words
  • The body image

    A Quote

    The body image is informed fundamentally from haptic and orienting experiences early in life. Our visual images are developed later on, and depend for their meaning on primal experiences that were acquired haptically.

    1. ​​Metaphors We Live By​​
    2. ​​Gods of the Word​​
    3. ​​The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses​​
    • body
    • meaning

    Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore, Body, Memory, and Architecture.

  • Meaningness

    A Website by David Chapman
    meaningness.com

    The word “meaning” has two quite different meanings in English. It can refer to the meaning of symbols, such as words and road signs. This book is not about that kind of meaning.

    People also speak of “the meaning of life.” That is the sort of meaningness this book is about. So I apply “meaningness” only to the sorts of things one could describe as “deeply meaningful” or “pretty meaningless.”

    • meaning
    • life

See also:
  1. words
  2. art
  3. beauty
  4. life
  5. images
  6. purpose
  7. language
  8. form
  9. poetry
  10. music
  11. spirit
  12. seeing
  13. zen
  14. symbols
  15. being
  16. reality
  17. perception
  18. objects
  19. construction
  20. harmony
  21. novelty
  22. invention
  23. math
  24. notetaking
  25. search
  26. chance
  27. sound
  28. body
  29. structure
  30. memory
  31. senses
  32. speech
  33. cliché
  34. material
  35. technology
  36. futurism
  37. consciousness
  38. ai
  1. James Somers
  2. Margaret Magnus
  3. Eliezer Yudkowsky
  4. Alain de Botton
  5. T.S. Eliot
  6. Christopher Alexander
  7. Donald Richie
  8. Ludwig Wittgenstein
  9. Italo Calvino
  10. Kimura Kyūho
  11. Josef Albers
  12. Smiljan Radić
  13. Kevin Lynch
  14. Ursula M. Franklin
  15. David Foster Wallace
  16. David Chapman
  17. Voltaire
  18. Ellen Lupton
  19. J. Abbott Miller
  20. Verlyn Klinkenborg
  21. Mark Liberman
  22. Steven J. Jackson
  23. Kay Ryan
  24. David Markson
  25. Dorothy Sayers
  26. Ian McGilchrist
  27. Maria Popova
  28. Dan Brooks
  29. Erik Hoel