Matteo’s Wasps’ Nest

After some time (and many other books read (even for the fifth time)), I took “Göedel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid” again.

There’s a paragraph in chapter IX titled “Codes and implicit meaning” and it made me start thinking about the following question:”Where is the meaning?”

Is it inside the words of a phrases? What if I don’t use words but numerals? Is the meaning of a message univoque? Is the meaning preserved if the message or whatever we refer the meaning to is changed through an isomorphism different from the identical isomorphism (e.g. it is faithfully translated, it is converted to binary, …) ? And, if the meaning is preserved, why and when can an isomorphism be preferred over another (e.g. we prefer using the decimal system over binary. Machines work better the opposite way) ?

Strange questions, I admit it. But curiosity and posing questions make us going forward.