Page:Reichenbach - Experience and Prediction.djvu/32

18 MEANING “Edinburgh,” as for example, in the sentence, “Edinburgh is north of London,” because the objects London and Edinburgh are in the relation to the North Pole corresponding to the word “north.” So the carbon patch “north” before your eyes has a meaning because it occurs in relation to other carbon patches in such a way that there is a correspondence to physical objects such as towns and the North Pole. Meaning is just this function of the carbon patch acquired by this connection.

One thing has to be considered in order that we may understand this situation. Whether a symbol has the function of meaning does not merely depend on the symbol and the facts in question; it also depends on the use of certain rules called the rules of language. That the order of the town names in the sentence previously cited must be the given one, and not the converse one, is stipulated by a rule of the language, without which the meaning of the word “north” would be incomplete. So it may be said that only the rules of language confer meaning on a symbol. At one time there were found certain stones covered with wedge- formed grooves; it was a long time before men discovered that these grooves have a meaning and were in ancient times the writing of a cultured people, the “cuneiformwriting” of the Assyrians. This discovery comprehends two facts: first, that it is possible to add a system of rules to the grooves pn the stones in such a way that they enter into relations with facts of the kind occurring in human history; second, that these rules were used by the Assyrians and that the grooves were produced by them. This second discovery is of great importance to history, but to logic the first discovery is the important one. To confer the name of symbols upon certain physical entities it is sufficient that rules can be added to them in such a way that correspondence to facts arises; it is not necessary that the