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The historical increase in the complexity of a culture-society is reflected in the increase in both the number of (counter)facts it produces and the average size of the minimal action required to reproduce an individual meaning. The transition from cultural selection based on the alternation of human generations to traditional choice based on the alternation of generations of meanings raised both the entropy of the source of (counter)facts and the complexity of the (counter)facts themselves.
When we apply the achievements of information theory to culture, we must note the difference between the terms “information” and “meaning.” Information is determinateness in general or certainty, its measure is the reduction of uncertainty. The unit of information is a bit, “1” or “0.” In contrast to information, meaning is directed certainty, an act of change in a certain direction. Examples of directed certainty are the evolution of living beings and the evolution of meanings. Humans process information (certainty) into meaning (mediated, that is, directed certainty) by matching information with needs. The unit of meaning is the cultural bit—not just “1” or “0,” but also “+” or “–.” Meaning is information in human action that reproduces the patterns of the world.
“The orderly structures and patterns of which we are most immediately aware are those within our own minds, bodies, and behavior, but virtually all human beings have a strong conviction that corresponding to these patterns of mind and body are similar patterns in what might be called the ‘real world’” (Boulding 1985, p. 9).
At the same time, meaning is not limited to a mental act that operates with abstraction. Thinking in itself is not an interaction with meanings as with some “supramundane” entities. Meaning is a material action and the result of an action. When we compare meanings with each other, we can distinguish between their general and particular properties. A clock is a device for measuring time. But this general property of being a clock does not exist in itself. It exists in the context of human activities related to clocks. The abstraction of a clock only makes sense in action, for example when you read and think about what is written in this book.