Meaning-Making Across Science, Music, and Abstract Art

ChRIS said:

Would you be able now to summarise all the points you've just been making about science, music and abstract art?

ChatGPT said:

Sure! Here’s a condensed synthesis of the key points:

1. Meaning-Making Across Science, Music, and Abstract Art

All three fields involve construing experience as meaning, but they differ in how they generate, structure, and stabilise that meaning.

2. The Three Core Processes of Meaning-Making

• Selection: Choosing elements from a system (hypotheses, chords, colours).
• Structuring: Arranging elements into meaningful wholes (theories, compositions, paintings).
• Resolution: Where meaning stabilises—or refuses to stabilise.

3. Degrees of Resistance to Resolution

• Science seeks resolution but resists individuation. It aims for generalisable meaning rather than personal or idiosyncratic meaning. Theories are always open to revision but strive for stability through evidence.
• Music balances resolution and resistance. It can resolve harmonically, but some of its most compelling moments come from stretching or avoiding resolution (e.g., unresolved cadences, atonality).
• Abstract Art resists resolution the most. Since it lacks a systemic connection between form and meaning, it remains open-ended, with interpretation heavily dependent on the viewer’s meaning-making potential.

4. A Possible Inversion

• Science could be seen as a kind of art that resists individuation (seeking universal, not personal meaning).
• Art could be seen as a kind of science that resists resolution (meaning never fully stabilises).

5. The Role of the Observer

• In science, the observer’s goal is to reduce subjectivity and increase intersubjectivity (shared understanding).
• In music, the observer co-creates meaning with the structure of the piece, guided by genre conventions and expectations.
• In abstract art, the observer plays the largest role, as meaning is almost entirely individuated rather than systemic.

Final Thought

Each domain has its own way of balancing systemic vs. instantial meaning and resolution vs. openness—but they all share the fundamental process of turning experience into meaning.