Dear Pedro,
I disagree about putting "meaning" outside the scope of natural sciences. I doubt that anybody on this list would disagree about using the metaphor of meaning in the natural sciences. Maturana (1978, p. 49): "In still other words, if an organism is observed in its operation within a second-order consensual domain, it appears to the observer as if its nervous system interacted with internal representations of the circumstances of its interactions, and as if the changes of state of the organism were determined by the semantic value of these representations. Yet all that takes place in the operation of the nervous system is the structure-determined dynamics of changing relations of relative neuronal activity proper to a closed neuronal network." http://www.enolagaia.com/M78BoL.html#Descriptions In other context, Maturana used the concept of "languaging". My point is about the differentia specifica of inter-human communication which assumes a next-order contingency of expectations structured by "horizons of meaning" (Husserl). One needs a specific (social-science) set of theories and methods to access this domain, in my opinion. In concrete projects, one can try to operationalize in terms of the information sciences / information theory. One can also collaborate "interdisciplinarily" at the relevant interface, notably with the computer sciences. The use of metaphors in other disciplines, however, cannot be denied. This is just a reaction; I had one penny left this week. J Best, Loet
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