Talk:Meta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Socrates
Philosophy Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] meta - wikipedia

I searched the Oxford English Dictionary Online for "metaposting" and "metanomic", but neither word was included. Also, neither word returned more than a thousand results on google. I felt that such esoteric words should be removed, so I did. Tigerford (talk) 18:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

What word or prefix can mean the opposite of meta? I am looking for a word that might be analagous to this> "micro" is to "macro" as "x" is to "meta" Any ideas? Katyism 20:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

If you look at some old versions of the page with the stuff deleted below, you'll see that Rucker has proposed "kata" (greek "down", contrast with meta=after) for something like this, but he's pretty alone. Since "meta" usually refers to some sort of abstraction, the opposite would be something like "concrete" or "literal".--Homunq 10:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Added Wikipedia, as I sought it searching 'meta'. Seems a link to meta.wikimedia.org may even be more appropriate, would offsite links fly here? -Here 08:25, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I thought this word ment "beyond". Is there any suport for that?

This is inscrutable stuff:

We read: Meta a direction orthogonal to x,y and z. So it's singular. Meta is the axes formed by what Rucker and others often refer to as Ana and Kata. So it's plural. Which? And who "Rucker and others", and in what context?

We read: Data about or processes operating on in the Hypercomputing Dictionary. Data about what, and processes operating on what? And what's the "Hypercomputing Dictionary"?

We read: To 'go meta' is to step orthogonally to the situation in order to grok additional layers of information that are affecting the decision making process. What does "step orthogonally to the situation" mean? -- Hoary 06:22, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

No answer yet, so I'm deleting this material. -- Hoary 12:32, 2005 May 5 (UTC)


I have a suspicion that the use of this prefix to indicate an extra layer of description was introduced by Douglas Hofstadter in his book [Godel Escher Bach] - does anyone know if it was used this way earlier? It certainly popularised it anyway. Theusername 13:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Certainly not! The OED cites usage in this manner from as far back as 1941. --dmd 02:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Restructure meta, meta- and metacorder

I've had a look at these three articles. Theres a confusion in that there wasn't a clear distinction between disambiguation and article (somewhat appropriately for a meta-subject!)

The article on meta- was intended to be disambiguation but this was very blurry, many "meta" words don't have a hyphen.

So I have split it this way:

Looks cleaner to me this way. FT2 (Talk | email) 19:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Removed recent unsourced paragrah

I am moving the following unsourced section here. - brenneman {L} 03:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Meta in Classical Studies

While the preposition meta has been widely used in other academic and non-academic fields, perhaps its greatest modern exponent would be the modern academy and, specifically, the field of Classical studies. Postmodernists of the 90s and the 21st century interested in pushing the boundaries of literary criticism and authorial intent have coined such terms as metanarrative and metapoetics which have long become familiar to scholars in the field. More recently, however, the term has shed its nominal trappings and, with little or no association to the parallel phenomenon evinced in Hofstadter's work, has begun to appear on its own to signify a certain distancing or ambiguity in the perception of reality. (Thus: "This argument is meta" signifies a surreal debate and "He is so meta" is equivalent to "He is so out there").

[edit] Question as a caption?

An encyclopedia should never ask questions to the reader. The answers should be given to the reader, and nothing more. The caption of the license plate picture is "What interpretations can you derive?"

[edit] Meta does not mean about

I am Greek and I can assure you that Meta does not mean about. Some might say that Metadata is data about data but this does not mean that meta means about. Meta means after. I am removing the about translation.

Things do change meaning, but I'm surprised, especially from someone with a background in a classical language, to use "data" as a singular. 171.71.37.203 18:08, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Meta ions?

I've seen chemistry pages mention meta ions many times, but I've never once seen a page on them. Does anyone know where one would be?RSido 00:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metabolism

    • Edit: nevermind. Didn't see the subsequent list.** —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.181.209.108 (talk) 00:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Metabolism should be on the list of words that utilize the Greek root 'meta.' Numerous sources can confirm this, including http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metabolism. Not sure why it was removed in the first place, but considering it is among the most relevant of the list, it certainly deserves mention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.181.209.108 (talk) 00:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology section

I've extended the etymology section, and reworded what was there already, to explain how the prefix came to have its modern meaning in English. It is, after all, an interesting story. The use of the term "back-formation" in the original section implies a failure to understand what a back-formation actually is (or at least gave no indication of how it was one). More importantly I removed the following:

Meta- & Meso- are thought to have come into Greek together from a mutual cognate, which would further imply 'meta' to contain or be of the meaning   
"parallel". [1]

I think there may be something useful to be said here, but what was written seems very unclear. What, after all, is meant by "mutual cognate" (cogantes are inherently mutual) and how does this imply the meaning "parallel"? Unfortunately, I don't have a copy to hand of Partridge's dictionary. If anyone does, could they please make clear what was meant? Then we could reinstate the above if it's useful to do so. Thanks. garik (talk) 11:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC) modified by garik (talk) 19:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)