04-01-2018, 08:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-01-2018, 09:20 PM by stevebowers.)
Fixed. (This very interesting essay was written by someone for whom English is not their first language. Despite this I think it is very well-crafted)
The meaning of meta- as a suffix seems to have shifted recently. Metaphysics has the sense of 'beyond physics', and metamorphosis means 'to change in shape or quality'. So it can mean 'change', or being 'beyond' or 'an extension of' something.
But the most common use of meta- these days is 'together with' or 'about', so that 'meta-data' means 'data about data', or data accompanying the main data; and meta-knowledge, which is knowledge about knowledge or the mechanism behind it. The term 'meta' by itself just means 'recursively self-referential, as in 'that's so meta'.
The meaning of meta- as a suffix seems to have shifted recently. Metaphysics has the sense of 'beyond physics', and metamorphosis means 'to change in shape or quality'. So it can mean 'change', or being 'beyond' or 'an extension of' something.
But the most common use of meta- these days is 'together with' or 'about', so that 'meta-data' means 'data about data', or data accompanying the main data; and meta-knowledge, which is knowledge about knowledge or the mechanism behind it. The term 'meta' by itself just means 'recursively self-referential, as in 'that's so meta'.