The definitions of words. The definition (or description) of a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a document, a corpus. At the “atomic” level of words, each definition and interpreted meaning is inflated and rendered intelligibly sensible as a function of dependency.
All words being defined in terms of other words, and as Bertrand Russell reflects in Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), this generates a circularly tautological situation in which we are compelled to use some terms without definition, to “draw a line in the sand”, so as to have a starting point from which to proceed to inhabit the relational networks and cultural (as cognitive) spaces that, mischievously, also inhabit us.
Definition is a form of compression: of all possible meanings, we select or intuit a handful of words as concepts from which we inversely triangulate back upon most probable meanings and intentions; an uncommonly expansive introspection, almost entirely reflexive, driven as much by instinct as by the vicissitudes and obligations, responsibilities and dependencies of social and cultural experience.
All any of us ever do is copy the copies and mechanisms of copying this hollow yet meaningfully referential displacement, bartering emptiness.
Daedelus Kite 