Levels of Meaning

We suggested last time that there are different ‘levels’ of meaning. What I mean here is that we can describe a giraffe in different ways: the common sense way, whereby a giraffe is a four legged animal with a long neck and spots, and a more theoretical way, where it has adapted to a particular environment by finding an ecological niche whereby a long neck enables grazing on otherwise unreachable food.

I put the word ‘level’ in scare quotes because it is a metaphor, and we sometimes have difficulty with metaphors. In this case, ‘level’ does not mean necessarily that one is better than another. The problem with spatial metaphors is that a higher level can seem to indicate superiority. In this case it indicates difference, only, not necessarily the superiority of the theoretical over the common sense.

As an example, consider the cycle of day and night. From the common sense point of view the sun rises and sets, and moves around the sky. From the perspective of physical theory, of course, the Earth rotates. This does not actually cause us too many problems. We can quite happily talk about sunrise without finding any cognitive hiccoughs over the fact that we know, theoretically, that the Earth rotates. We can live in both the common sense and theoretical world quite happily.

What we do not, or should not, do is to attempt to live in both the common sense and theoretical worlds at the same time. This can lead to all sorts of difficulty and confusion, and often impedes the progress of theoretical (in the sense here of scientific) work. It is, after all, obvious that the Earth does not move. We cannot feel it moving, although there is some evidence, from the motion of the planets, that something more complex is going on than everything simply rotating about us. It took centuries to work out what, however.

That working out required a degree of separation of the theoretical and the common sense. The approach taken, in order not to upset the authorities, was to suggest the heliocentric solar system as a hypothesis, for the purposes of calculating things more easily. That was just about acceptable to a church, university and society which had accepted a form of the Aristotelian universe, so long as it was never said that the Earth went around the Sun. Of course, it did not take long before the common sense idea was replaced by the heliocentric solar system largely because the latter was a lot simpler mathematically.

The transfer from one level of meaning to another is, therefore, not straightforward, but thinking you are at one level when you are at the other is problematic. For example, Creationism, the idea that the world was created in seven days, following the first chapter of Genesis, is a common sense sort of idea. Accounts of the world such as that (or rather, those) in Genesis are common sense accounts. After all, no-one was witness to the events recounted (except God) and so we have to in fact look for a non-common sense, a theological, meaning to the stories. Exactly what these are is not the issue here. The issue is if we read the account in Genesis 1 as a theoretical account, we land up with a load of silly ideas about the start of the world, and a denial of a lot of accepted science. Concepts that are in that position are usually incorrect.

To transfer from one level to another can be difficult. As in the case of Creationism, as much has to be unlearnt as new has to be learnt. Modern science and theology of the natural world starts from a very different place than modern creationism, and reaches different conclusions. No amount of effort by ‘scientific’ creationists to bridge that gap will in fact achieve it. As a common sense world view it perhaps works, but as a useful one for technology and science it does not.

Primarily, then, moving from the level of common sense to the level of theory (or science) is a question of education. We learn about the evolution of giraffes and, once we have done so, we can appreciate the giraffe both as a four legged animal with a long neck, and as a highly evolved adaptation to a particular environment. Once we have understood the evolution of giraffes, however, we can move from the level of common sense – the four legged animal with a long neck – to one of ‘theory’ - the evolved creature - without much cognitive effort. The interesting question is, perhaps, how anyone managed it in the first place, or how we manage to make the transition when we learn about it.

Often the move is made, or suggested, by a model or a metaphor. In science the move from the Earth centred universe to the Sun centred solar system was made by diagrams and physical models of things going around a centre. From this the motion of the planets from the viewpoint of the Earth can be understood. Sometimes, the planets move backwards because the Earth overtakes them in orbit. This retrograde motion was a puzzle in the Earth centred universe, but was solved by the heliocentric one. But the move was from common sense to theory, and that move was enabled by a lot of observational data but made by a new model of the world.

Similarly (although I do not know this, not being a zoologist) the move from a common sense giraffe, as giraffe that just is as it presents, to the giraffe as a result of millions of years of evolution requires some sort of shift, achieved by the sorts of metaphors and models which we can learn as part of our biological studies. As with the cycle of day and night we can then live at both levels quite happily.

The question is then, of course, is there a further level beyond that of theory, as theory is beyond that of common sense. But that would be another post.