Meaning is a function of sound and number. I make no apologies for the boldness of that statement: Although hardly conventional wisdom, it holds up under critical examination. Meaning is linguistic meaning-there is no other kind-and language is made up of language sounds strung together in specific sequences.

　　　Ah but! The meaning, you say, is something other than the sounds and their sequence. The meaning is in the images and sensations language invokes. Not so. Invoked images and sensations are products of meaning, not its source. Words are abstract-that is, they point to similarities in otherwise isolated and distinct observations or events-and therefore meaning cannot possibly be contained by specific example.

　　　The words pind elephant call to mind an image, yet I assure you that your imaginary pink elephant and mine are not identical (mine, for example, is wearing logging boots). Both your pink elephant and mine illustrate the words pink elephant, however neither constitutes an adequate definition. The meanings of pink and elephant and pink elephant can only be described or defined linguistically, that is, as such and such an animal that is such and such a color and so on, and all of that is more ordered

　　　This line of reasoning is inherently cumbersome. We are talking about the what is of language, and since the only tool we have to work with is language itself, there is inevitably a point were explanation fails. This is, however, just the point I am getting at, so please bear with me.

　　　Another example: There is no "hard" reality, book. There are plenty of books, to be sure, but no two books are the same (even copies from the same edition of a particular book can be distinguished, if only by scratches on the dust jacket, one from another). Book, the word, is not defined by the object, book; rather, book names the commonality between all books (a commonality that is likewise linguistically defined), thereby identifying a class of objects that exists as an abstraction and only as an abstraction.

　　　To dogs and monkeys the human world of meaning is all babble. Where their world is one of direct experience on which they pass no judgment and upon which they draw no conclusions, our humanness is all-every bit of it-about this sea of sound we swim in.

　　　Not just any sounds but language sounds, a very special set of sounds found only in human speech. The public discourse we call human life is a direct product of our innate capacity for utterance in distinct syllables made up of vowels and consonants. Furthermore, and this is the crux of meaning, these utterances exercise the power and influence over us that they do because they reflect, not an external, physical reality, but an internal, conscious one.

　　　Unless you are in the habit of reading to yourself out loud, this entire conversation is taking place in your mind (skipping over questions regarding what mind is and where it resides), just as it is in mine. Furthermore, regardless of whether or not what I have written makes sense, or whether you agree or disagree, you recognize the words that I am using, and the way that you recognize them is internally (consciously) as thought-sounds.

　　　The saying of language comes after, and takes far longer than, the thinking of it (the reason why written communication occurs much faster than oral and, at least in part, why written language supercedes speech as the medium of choice in the transmission of knowledge and information). Verbal communication is the external "out loud" expression of internal processes recognized by a speaker and a listener who, although separated

　　　The hermit in his cave uses language no less than the man in the village. To be human is to think in language day-in and day-out, and whether communicated or not, those thoughts make up our world and cnstitute our innermost sense of self and being. Our ability to communicate, since it derives from this shared linguistic constitution, is testimony that reality itself is a linguistic event: Linguistic reality is objective fact, harder than the hard physical reality of our surroundings.

　　　What about the assumption that we acqire language from our environment? True, I speak English and Japanese as a result of my upbringing and immersion in those praticular linguistic environments-the same reason that I do not speak Greek. All this says, however, is that the linguistic environment determinse which language or languages we speak. Specific languages are shaped through the process of cultural conditioning from this fundamental capacity for language and language-sounds.

　　　As I observed in the last issue of Character Sound & Number, human language most certainly evolved through a prolonged period of infancy lasting many millenniums, during which time its basic constructs were arrived at by slow but persistent consensus. This process must have been spontaneous, just the way that it is in a small child. It also must have been entirely unconscious. Human consciousness is no more or less than the product of linguistic evolution, which is to say that language invented us and not the other way around.

　　　Regardless of what language we speak, there is a profound commonality to the phonetic structure of language. It is made up of vowels-of which there are five cardinal sounds, these sounds in turn defining language-specific diphthongs and half-vowels-and consonants-of which there are fourteen major sound groups. Together these sounds are a complete set, a closed system open to infinite combination. Here again, where there is sound there is number, and where there is number there is sound, and where there is sound and number there is meaning.

　　　Now, about numers: The concept of number is, of course, also a linguistic phenomenon, however within language, numbers are special (Character Sound & Number, Volume 1 Issue 1). In the course of linguistic evolution, the cognition of numbers occurs some time after verbal cognition, just as a child begins speaking first and learns to count later. Numbers are the language of order and sequence.

　　　There it is. Not how much or how many or how long or how fast, but order. Three is three by definition because it comes after two and precedes four. Quantity, duration, speed, and so on are all assessed through reference to this order in a relative context. Numbers: A sequence of words or written symbols beginning with one and extending indefinitely; an ordered sequence (the basis for all ordered sequences), closed at one end and open at the other. Each member of the sequence, as any good mathematician will tell you, is a unique entity with its own set of characteristics and attributes.

　　　Our direct experience of words-and numbers are no exception-is as sounds (and as lines on paper, but we shall get to that later). We know one in English by its pronunciation; likewise three and so no. The quality of number-ness however is one that is observed, not experienced. There is a difference.

　　　One we experience as the sound (its pronunciation) but observe as a singularity. The difference between one apple and two is known by observation and has little to do with our experience of the apple as a rosy red and sweet smelling bump in our field of vision.

　　　Likewise, the sound associated with the word can be observed numerically. We know sound to be a function of vibration. The sounds that we hear are the result of ripples in the atmospheric medium caused by local events. Those ripples can be defined in precise numerical terms as composite waves made up of amplitudes and frequencies, as the recent technology of digital recording most aptly demonstrates.

　　　Furthermore, even the written word one has its numerical aspect. It has one syllable, for example, but is spelt with three letters. These letters are themselves numerical entities, in that they are members of an ordered sequence, closed at each end. The sequence is what defines the letters, and the letters are functional and have meaning only to the extent that they are used in combination with other letters from the sequence. Thus O is the fifteenth letter of the alphabet, N is the fourteenth, and E is the fifth.

　　　Where there is sound there is number, and where sound is experienced, number is observed. Experience and observation, subject and object, induction and deduction: These are all names for two fundamental aspects of the same phenomenon, the vertical and horizontal axes of language at whose intersection meaning happens. Neither aspect can be separated entirely from the other: Show me a sound that cannot be observed as well as heard or a number that cannot be heard as well as observed.

　　　Here things get very sticky. The domain of sound and number is so all-inclusive that even experience and observation are themselves made of this same stuff, for in the end, observation and experience are words and have no extant reality or meaning outside of the context of language. Language, you see, is completely self contained; words and meaning are self-referential. Such is the nature of the world in which we live.

　　　And yet, self-referential though it may be, language is not arbitrary. Meaning is judicious and precise, a universal quality found in all things. This is exactly the implication of the word meaning. Its root is the word mean, and in as much as a mean has to do with units of measure, meaning implies an inherent numeric aspect. Taken at face value, meaning is a process, a going from and returning to (-ing) of the mean, that which is equidistant from two extremes.

　　　In terms of time and space, that mean is now and here; in terms of speed it is infinite speed having the appearance of absolute rest; in terms of

　　　I have chosen deliberately to interpret mean (the same letters in another order spell name) in meaning in absolute terms. Words also have their "usual" relative meanings, where mean, for example, refers to the time kept in Greenwich and the number five as it relates to one and nine. Relative uses of the word mean are valid within particular frames of reference: Five ceases to be a mean when its extremes become one and eleven, and Greenwich Mean Time is virtually meaningless within the time-space continuum as conceived of by Einstein and applied in celestial and quantum mechanics. These are borrowed meanings, and what they borrow from is the absolute, all-encompassing mean of meaning as carried by sound and number.

* * *

　　　Words, as in the pink elephant and book examples, point to commonality. This is their absolute function. The essence of meaning is this propensity for abstraction. And it is precisely as a result of this propensity for abstraction that we are able to use words to create distinctions within the relative world. One more example: The essence of the word red is a commonality in otherwise unrelated phenomena, say a rose and a fire engine; it gives the refractive surface properties of these phenomena a common address within the same general band of the electromagnetic spectrum. In as much as we (mankind) have come to assume that the color red exists outside of language, this quite remarkable interpretation has become part of our "hard reality."

　　　The color red on its own does not divide the universe into bands of color; rather, it unifies phenomena as diverse as roses, fire engines, and sunsets. We, however, take the commonality of red in these different phenomena so entirely for granted that we accept the word red as a distinction-as something different from, say, blue and green. The distinction of red from blue and green is the relative,

　　　We acquire language through experience. We learn the meanings of book and red through association. The meanings book and red, however, encompass my experience and your experience and all the examples of book and red that were or ever will be. Meaning is meaning because it is universal- that is, larger than collective human experience.

　　　Language is the public domain of the human experience. There is no private life-even our most private thoughts are expressed in the public medium. Meaning, however, is not limited to this public domain: Only self-indulgence and extreme ignorance has it that this medium is humanly created and humanly defined. The linguistic domain is neither arbitrary nor contrived; it derives from meaning as universal value.

　　　A word about definitions: What is definite, in our usual understanding of the word, is that which is defined. We determine the relative meaning of words through the process of definition-that is, through the process of establishing limits and delineating boundaries, these limits and boundaries in turn derivec through comparison and distinction. The relative definition of words is, therefore, a function of measuring what is against what isn't.

　　　A face value, however, the word definite suggests something entirely different: That which is definite is that which is out of, away from, or in contradiction to (de-) that which is finite. If the uncertain ever-changing relative world of events is defined in that which is de- finite, then the word definition can be interpreted literally to imply that certainty resides in the intangible domain of meaning.

　　　Language is a double-edged sword (s + word ). The way that we use words in our everyday sppeech is the creative momentum driving our lives. That relative domain of language, however, derives from a deeper significance. The source of linguistic creativity and momentum is the domain of unbounded (undefined) intelligence going and coming upon itself, generating meaning ad infinitum like a pulsating magno-electric field surrounding the absolute coordinates of now and here.

　　　Unlike elephants, books, and colors, there is nothing we can point to and say, for examle, this is love. Our concepts of love, as well as other abstract concepts, are inevitably limited by personal experience, and given the variety of human experience, we might conclude that agreement on anything should be the exception rather than the rule. That would indeed be so if language were based on anything less than absolutes.

　　　What is relative is our individual experience of love, not the word. The word is not the experience but the abstraction, and as an abstraction it includes your experience, my experience, and their experience without being limited by any of these. Throughout the gamut of human sentiment, the word love, and only the word, is consistent-non-relative, absolute.

　　　Is there anything, then, we can point to in language that clearly represents absolute value-something that will take us closer than the vagueness of conceptual definition to the heart of meaning? Unequivocally, the answer is yes.

* * *

　　　Human creativity takes place within a medium of expression. That medium is, of course, language, however, more specifically, it is the language of the particular culture to which we belong.

　　　Culture, like language, is an evolutionary phenomenon. Every culture has its unique identity and disposition; each comes stamped with a mission and an innate set of prejudices. The stamp of culture pervades every corner of human existence, shaping both our surroundings and our concept and definition of ourselves.

　　　In this context, that most of the major technological advancements of the last five hundred years are legacies of Western European civilization is clearly no accident. The mission and destiny of Western civilization is plainly spelled out in its cultural underpinnings. The western world is defined as a culture by the common use of the Roman alphabet and the Arabic numerals.

　　　Really. Writing is the great preserver, the great unifier, and the great communicator of knowledge, and the way that that knowledge is recorded-the medium in which it is recorded-virtually defines our worldview.

　　　The word culture in Japanese and Chinese is written (in Japanese, bunka) and the word civilization is written (in Japanese, bunmei ). The common element in both of these words is the character meaning writing or written language. bunka, culture, is bun writing and ka change,

the change or enhancement that comes about in human society through writing. bunmei, civilization, is bun writing and mei brightness or clarity, the illumination that takes place through the vehicle of writing.

　　　The importance of the ideographic writing system as the unifying force behind Chinese civilization, and in a broader sense, what establishes the commonality of East-Asian culture, is a matter of historical fact. The middle kingdom, past and present, embraces peoples ethnically and linguistically diverse-far more diverse, say, than the different peoples of Western Europe-yet these peoples are unified culturally through their common written medium. Likewise, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (the replacement of Vietnam's ideographic script with an alphabetical one is a recent event within the context of that country's long history), nations whose spoken languages bear little or no resemblance to each other, share a common East-Asian cultural identity through their adoption of the Chinese ideographs.

　　　The Chinese characters are just that: written symbols that have character-ideographs in that they represent ideas and are read ideographically as opposed to phonetically. Where the individual letters of the alphabet have no inherent meaning and come alive only when they are combined with other letters to spell a word, the ideographs are wholes, each one having a complete meaning in and of itself.

　　　Where the alphabet is a closed system, the ideographic system is open-ended. The number of characters, of course, is not infinite, however it is also not precise: What is counted or not counted becomes a matter of opinion, and characters appear and disappear over time. Furthermore, the individual characters are not subject, as are the letters of the alphabet, to any precise numerical order within the group of characters as a whole. Nor is it necessary, as it is with the alphabet, to know all of the ideographs (most people in these cultures in fact never do) in order to read and write.

　　　The ideographic system is rich in shades of meaning, lending itself to the capture of subtle nuance, aesthetic detail, and metaphysical understanding of the natural world. Conversely, Eastern civilization left to its own devices would never have developed, say, the equations of calculus or the theory of relativity. The reason for this most certainly has nothing to do with aptitude or genetic disposition, as demonstrated by the speed with which these ideas have taken hold in the East. Rather, it has everything to do with the cultural medium through which knowledge is acquired and communicated.

　　　What, then, are the characteristics of the Roman alphabet? As we have already noted, it is an ordered, closed system. It is defined, therefore, numerically (A is the first letter, B the second, and so forth). It is also fundamentally analytical. The concept of dividing sounds into vowels and consonants, one that we take quite for granted, is an inherently alphabetical process.

　　　Case in point: A lone consonant, devoid of vowels, is a phonetic inconvenience. Consonants are heard, and especially heard as language sounds, in combination, and only in combination, with vowels.

　　　Here again, the best illustration is by way of comparison. The Japanese kana system is the prime example of a phonetic script representing real sounds.

　　　The kana syllabery, in its most common arrangement, is displayed in a table of fifty squares, five deep and ten wide. The table is read from top to bottom and from right to left. The right hand column contains the five vowel sounds, a (pronaounced like the middle vowel in far), i (like ee in see ), u (like oo in food), e (like the middle vowel in say ), and o (like the middle vowel in low). The vowel sounds are called boin, meaning literally, mother sounds.

　　　The nine columns to the left of the vowels are called shiin, meaning child sounds. The child sounds are all composed of a consonant beginning and a vowel ending; the second column, for example, is made up of k placed in front of a, i, u, e, and o in succession. All fifty sounds are open syllables, meaning they return to their vowel parent (ka is only ka for a split second; extend it for any length of time and it turns back into a).

　　　At least this is the way we would explain these sounds in alphabetical terms. In Japanese each of these sounds is represented with a single phonetic character instead of two. No consonant, no vowel; just one whole sound or syllable: as opposed to ka; as opposed to ki; as opposed to ku.

　　　The concept of a k devoid of any vowel is entirely abstract and highly analytical. The alphabet is a masterpiece of analytical design. The economy of the alphabet is exquisite: With just twenty-six letters it can give reasonable phonetic representation to any language in use on earth. (Note this is certainly not something that can be said for the kana system: To begin with, there is no mechanism in

　　　The unique asset of the kana system, on the other hand, is the recognition of the primacy of the vowels, even naming them mother sounds. This is more than cultural disposition; it is hard fact. Vowels are the absolute and preconditional requisite of all language sounds, to which consonants are adjuncts. Within the context of the alphabet, however, vowels and consonants are relative concepts: two types of sounds inter-dispersed within the same linear alphabetical progression. Passing over, for the time being. the details of this progression, suffice it to say that the innate prejudice of the alphabet is for analytical and deductive processes, where the parts make up the whole, and for closed as opposed to open syllables, where the weight of meaning is carried by consonant, as opposed to vowel, sounds.

　　　This medium stands in the background of Western Europe as the legacy of the Roman empire; that is to say our modern culture is ingrained with over two thousand years of alphabetical conditioning. You and I (allowing for an assumption as regards your cultural background) are as much a product of this conditioning as we are of genetic code.

　　　The differenece between the medieval world and the modern one is a later addition to the written lexicon. It was introduced long after the fall of Rome in the eleventh and twelfth centuries from North Africa. I refer, of course, to the Arabic numerals (Character Sound & Number, Volume 1 Issue 1). The Arabic numerals and the facility for mathematical logic they sponsor are at the root of science and technology. They are also at the root of commerce and economics. But for these numerals, all we associate with modern life is not even

　　　Together these two systems, the Roman alphabet and the Arabic numerals ( sound and number), function as two sides, back and front, of the one cultural coin. Together they are the written dimension of meaning as we know it in the English language. Written language, as the natural evolution of the human language instinct, is the direct reflection of meaning in the visual domain-the extension of one-dimensional human thought process off of the body's physical extremity, the hand, into two-dimensional form.

　　　This simple observation has profound implications. Written language is where the abstract domain of meaning enters directly and without intermediary into the world of physical form-where meaning derived from absolute transparency is made visible in the shapes and composition of written characters and letters. Written characters and letters deliver up both sound and number as objective entities, allowing us to look directly into the world of meaning, and this realization places us on the brink of a new age of discovery.