There are an ever-growing number of books entitled, “The Meaning of X”, X being any topic, mundane or scholarly, from god, life and sex to gardens, landscape, and photography. (These last are of particular interest to me). Such titles raise the question of what meaning is. What does it mean to always looking for meaning? What is the meaning of all this meaning? Surely we’ve figured some of it out by now.
My musing was spurred this morning by Amazon’s insertion into my email box of the latest title available for pre-order: Meaning in Landscape Architecture and Gardens. The book, by Marc Treib, professor of architecture at UC Berkley, explains how plants and landscape architecture provide meaning either because meaning is somehow designed into the garden from the start, or that meaning accrues after the fact, over time and through use.
I am used to Amazon knowing all about my interests and buying habits, but I was taken aback this time by the Meaning title itself. It seemed to signal the persistent confidence in the fact that this question is somehow new, that only NOW have we got around to inquiring into meaning. It strikes me that this posture of having just discovered meaning is more about having forgotten all about it for the 30 seconds that we are not reminded of it by another book. The portentous title is a symptom of the gigantic deficit of attention that has come to characterize our (the Amazon clientele, anyway) contemporary state of being. How will we ever survive such chronic cultural amnesia?
Some meaning books:
-The meaning of meaning : a study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism, by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, 1945.
-Meaning in the visual arts, Erwin Panofsky, 1955.
-The meaning of gardens : idea, place, and action, edited by Mark Francis and Randolph T. Hester, Jr., 1990.
-What gardens mean , by Stephanie Ross, 1998.
-The meaning of photography, edited by Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson, 2008.
Just to name a very few.
