DISTRIBUTED MEANING (Principle of
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 960 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics, Methodology or model |
The complete characteristics or meaning of an element in a set of interconnected elements cannot be completely guessed from that single element .
This principle is a direct consequence of the system's nature, being the interrelations and constraints as important as the proper qualities of any element .
The principle is very general. For example, in any word, composed of sounds and syllabes, “the acoustic cues for each sound (are) distributed across the entire word” (Ph. LIEBERMAN, 1997).
In the same way, the shades of meaning of a word in a sentence can be wholly perceived only within the sentence, and even in some cases within the whole context .
The same is true of cultural elements , whose more significant meaning can be captured only within a social behavior , as for example a ritual.
See also
Memory (Distributed)