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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>As a first step in the specification of the relevance of Shannon’s engineering model for developing a theory of meaning, Weaver (1949, at p. 26) proposed two minor additions to Shannon’s diagram of a communication channel, as follows: <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:22.5pt;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'>“One can imagine, as an addition to the diagram, another box labeled “Semantic Receiver” interposed between the engineering receiver (which changes signals to messages) and the destination. This semantic receiver subjects the message to a second decoding, the demand on this one being that it must match the statistical semantic characteristics of the message to the statistical semantic capacities of the totality of receivers, or of that subset of receivers which constitute the audience one wishes to affect. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:22.5pt;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:.5in'>Similarly one can imagine another box in the diagram which, inserted between the information source and the transmitter, would be labeled “semantic noise,” the box previously labeled as simply “noise” now being labeled “engineering noise.” From this source is imposed into the signal the perturbations or distortions of meaning which are not intended by the source but which inescapably affect the destination. And the problem of semantic decoding must take this semantic noise into account.” <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:22.5pt'><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-right:22.5pt;text-align:center'><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-right:22.5pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><img width=847 height=415 id="Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:image003.png@01D1CF8B.1F207680" alt="cid:image003.png@01D1CF8B.1F207680"></span><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-right:22.5pt;text-align:center'><b><o:p> </o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-right:22.5pt;text-align:center'><b>Figure 1</b>: Weaver’s (1949) “minor” additions penciled into Shannon’s (1948) original diagram.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:22.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:22.5pt'>Since the “semantic receiver” recodes the information in the messages (received from the “engineering receiver” who only changes signals into messages) while having to assume the possibility of “semantic noise,” a semantic relationship between the two new boxes can also be envisaged. Given Shannon’s framework, however, this relation cannot be considered as another information transfer—since semantics are defined as <i>external</i> to Shannon’s engineering model. <span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:22.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:22.5pt'>Semantics are not based on specific communications, but on relations among <i>patterns of relations</i> or, in other words, correlations. In the case of a single relation, the relational distance is not different from the correlational one; but in the case of relations involving three (or more) agents, the distances in the vector space are different from the Euclidean distances in the network space. In a triplet, the instantiation of one or the other relation can make a difference for the further development of the triadic system of relations. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:22.5pt'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>A system of relations can be considered as a semantic domain (Maturana, 1978). In other words, the sender and receiver are related in the graph of Figure 1, while they are correlated in terms of not necessarily instantiated relations in the background. The structure of correlations provides a latent background that provides meaning to the information exchanges in relations. The correlations are based on the same information, but the representation in the vector space is different from the graph in the network space of observable relations. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In other words, meaning is not added to the information, but the same information is delineated differently and considered from a different perspective (including absent relations; i.e., zeros in the distribution). As against Shannon-type information which flows linearly from the sender to the receiver, one can expect meanings to loop, and thereby, to develop next-order dimensionalities. New meanings generate new options and thus redundancy. In my opinion, the task is to specify mechanisms which generate redundancy (cf. Leydesdorff & Ivanova, 2014).<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'>Source: </span>Loet Leydesdorff, Alexander Petersen, and Inga A. Ivanova, <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05251">The Self-Organization of Meaning and the Reflexive Communication of Information.</a><i> Social Science Information </i>(in press).<br> <br>Loet Leydesdorff and Inga A. Ivanova, <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6849">Mutual Redundancies in Inter-human Communication Systems: Steps Towards a Calculus of Processing Meaning</a>, <i>Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65</i>(2) (2014) 386-399.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'><hr size=3 width="100%" align=center></span></div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'>Loet Leydesdorff <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'>Professor, University of Amsterdam<br>Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net" title="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:blue'>loet@leydesdorff.net </span></a></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'>; </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.leydesdorff.net/" title="http://www.leydesdorff.net/"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:blue'>http://www.leydesdorff.net/</span></a></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D'> <br></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black'>Associate Faculty, </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>SPRU, </span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black'>University of Sussex; <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black'>Guest Professor </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>Zhejiang Univ.</span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black'>, Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, </span><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>ISTIC, </span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black'>Beijing;<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black'>Visiting Professor, </span><a name="_GoBack"></a><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>Birkbeck</span></a></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:black'>, University of London; <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><a href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en"><span style='font-size:9.0pt;color:blue'>http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#44546A'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><br clear=all><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><hr size=1 width="33%" align=left></span></div></div></div></body></html>