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To: d. alexander who wrote (25627)	3/16/2000 11:11:00 PM
From: j g cordes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 68396

OT.. Dorothy, I'm going to further the point/counterpoint discussion with a road less traveled, but relevant none the less. It has to do with what I'll call the parallel refining of meaning and context. As you can well tell by the articles on complexity, our tools both specifically and especially in sum, exceed our grasp. Yet we manage complex systems with only an occasional disaster like Chernoble or TMI (which I covered for Fortune Magazine). Language has been stressed to evolve by the same needs, like our tools, to be more and more refined and precise in meaning. While sifting through language origins late this afternoon I stumbled across a paper describing early dictionaries. In particular how, as this author demonstrates, our current conception of word meanings has changed from words being understood as metaphor and feeling to having to be precise and qualified. Print these pages out along side the complexity papers and compare the qualitative need for precision today with days of old. "Most English Renaissance speakers and writers, however, seem not to have recognized meaning as fixed senses, an aspect of language that we have taken for granted since Samuel Johnson. Meaning was fuzzy and indeterminate." chass.utoronto.ca