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Originally Posted by FallingLeaves
But that aside even if you go the scientific route and try to correlate direct meanings between the map and reality you are beset with things like 99% of your meanings came from studying the relationships between other meanings; an absurdly small amount came by actually observing the terrain. So how the heck are you supposed to make an accurate model of what the words are in relation to the terrain, when you are only looking at the relationships between one word and another?
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Wonderfully written replies weareunity and FallingLeaves! Allow me to pluck FallingLeaves interesting observation and further flesh-out what I'm noticing with this issue.
Lets take the word "Farming" and run it though the paces. Now everyone knows what a farm is, we can define this easily, it's a place where food is grown. We should be able to leave this right here. And yet as I move ever further into farming it's obvious to me that this description of farming only "points" in a direction of what's actually taking place among various locations. Over the winter I studied all manor of farming so could write for some time as to how one farm may be so dramatically different than the one a mile away, so much so, that it's difficult to imagine that both of them occupy the same label.
And the term "farm" will carry with it dramatically different imagery when a city person and a person who works the land compare notes. And at this, the inner definition of each individual will have structured the imagery of what a farm is in purely customized ways. No two individuals will view the term farm in exactly the same way, and can be as different as extremes could be different.
So what is a "farm"? It depends on who you ask.
And this would be the case with every word we'd focus on. Each word is an individualized definition/experience. So the term itself only points in a general direction and would require most of ones lifetime to define. :)