Audiobooks Released
We have been experimenting with AI-assisted audiobook production and we’re happy to announce that our first two titles should be available from the Kindle Store and (soon) on Audible.com and Apple Books.
The goal for this project is to put audio editions of public domain works, particularly original language works, into the hands of students, scholars and hobbyists. If you’d like to read an extended philosophical article about our name and why Meaning is so prominent, see here. In a nutshell, we propose that Meaning—understood as the structured relation between differences—is at minimum a ubiquitous property of the universe, analogous to information or entropy in physics. The word Meaning contains the mathematical term “mean,” which denotes the midpoint or ratio that equally relates two quantities. (“Ratio” is the latin term that is most often used to translate the Greek term “logos.”) It is the relation that balances difference. Take any two points, draw a line between them, bisect that line into equal parts and, viola, you have “the mean.”
The adoption of this term as fundamental came from our study of phenomenology and the adoption of the term Meinung by the intellectual heirs of Brentano (Husserl, etc.). Following Brentano’s insight that consciousness is always consciousness of something, we find in his term Meinung—meaning, intention, directedness—the linguistic ancestor of meaning itself. A thing in the world is never simply a thing in itself, it is always a thing for (some)thing. Note the parallelism with the mathematical concept of the ratio known as the mean: one thing (node) encounters another thing (node) and the relation between them (edge) has a property of “meaning.” This is the inspiration for the style and all of the artwork on our site, for our approach to learning and pedagogy, to systems design, to music and all other pursuits. The differences between things are always meaningful. Meaning, as the relational structure connecting differences, underlies the emergence of complexity, organization, and consciousness. It is not a product of mind but the very principle through which mind and matter cohere.
Our audiobook experiment begins with two titles:
The Tao Te Ching: Bilingual English-Chinese, Intelinear Edition
The Gospel of John: Bilingual English-Greek, Intelinear Edition
These titles were chosen for their centrality, their universality and the fact that they both are obsessively focused on Meaning. The central concepts of these works—the Dao and the Logos—conceptually overlap each other to such a degree as to be translations for one another in either language. Both words could also be translated as “Meaning.” In the East, the yin-yang is the symbol that emerged to convey the dynamism at the heart of identity and difference in our world. In the West, the cross emerged for the very same purpose. The intersections of being/nothing, God/man, heaven/earth, the Meaning of it all can be symbolized by the intersection of a vertical and a horizontal line as fundamental symbol. Or, take that same intersection of nodes and edges and spin it and watch the yin-yang emerge.
The cover art in each of these titles is intended to echo the other and to call to mind these fundamental properties of Meaning. Though somewhat anachronistic (at least with respect to the written record) the cover of the Gospel of John is also intended to call to mind kabbalistic symbology which springs from the same Platonic sources that are evident in that work.
Both titles deal with the world above and the world below, with heaven and earth, and how best to attune oneself to Meaning. One is almost entirely a-historical and non-narrative, the other is cast in the first century against the backdrop of Empire, settler colonialism, apartheid and nationalism through the melodramatic biography of an itinerant Rabbi. We hope not only that your experience of each of them will enrich your pilgrimage through this life but, most of all, that the relationship between the two works will provide you with ever deeper encounters with Meaning, which is its own reward.
If you enjoy either work or have suggestions on other audio editions we should release, we would love to hear from you.
