Meta (prefix)

Meta (from the Greek μετά, meta, meaning 'after' or 'beyond') is an adjective meaning 'more comprehensive' or 'transcending'.^[1]

In modern nomenclature, the prefix meta- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or endeavor (metatheory: theory about a theory; metamathematics: mathematical theories about mathematics; meta-axiomatics or meta-axiomaticity: axioms about axiomatic systems; metahumor: joking about the ways humor is expressed; etc.).^[2]

Original Greek meaning

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

In

Epistemology

In

"Metagaming", accordingly, refers to games about games. However, it has a different meaning depending on the context. In role-playing games, this means that someone with a higher level of knowledge is playing; that is, that the player incorporates factors that are outside the actual framework of the game – the player has knowledge that was not acquired through experiencing the game, but through external sources. This type of metagaming is often frowned upon in many role-playing game communities because it impairs game balance and equality of opportunity.^[4] Metagaming can also refer to a game that is used to create or change the rules while playing a game. One can play this type of metagame and choose which rules apply during the game itself, potentially changing the level of difficulty. Such metagames include campaign role-playing games like Halo 3.^[5] Complex card or board games, e.g. poker or chess, are also often referred to as metagames. According to Nigel Howard, this type of metagame is defined as a decision-making process that is derived from the analysis of possible outcomes in relation to external variables that change a problem.^[6]

Abstraction and self-reference

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Any subject can be said to have a metatheory, a theoretical consideration of its properties – such as its foundations, methods, form, and utility – on a higher level of abstraction. In linguistics, grammar is considered to be a metalanguage: a language operating on a higher level to describe properties of the plain language, and not itself.

Etymology

The prefix comes from the

The earliest form of the word "meta" is the Mycenaean Greek me-ta, written in Linear B syllabic script.^[8] The Greek preposition is cognate with the Old English preposition mid "with", still found as a prefix in midwife. Its use in English is the result of back-formation from the word "metaphysics". In origin Metaphysics was just the title of one of the principal works of Aristotle; it was so named (by Andronicus of Rhodes) because in the customary ordering of the works of Aristotle it was the book following Physics; it thus meant nothing more than "[the book that comes] after [the book entitled] Physics". However, even Latin writers misinterpreted this as entailing metaphysics constituted "the science of what is beyond the physical".^[9] Nonetheless, Aristotle's Metaphysics enunciates considerations of a nature^{[clarification needed]} above physical reality, which one can examine through certain philosophy – for example, the existence of God. The use of the prefix was later extended to other contexts, based on the understanding of metaphysics as meaning "the science of what is beyond the physical".

Early use in English

The Oxford English Dictionary cites uses of the meta- prefix as "beyond, about" (such as meta-economics and meta-philosophy) going back to 1917. However, these formations are parallel to the original "metaphysics" and "metaphysical", that is, as a prefix to general nouns (fields of study) or adjectives. Going by the OED citations, it began being used with specific nouns in connection with mathematical logic sometime before 1929. (In 1920 David Hilbert proposed a research project in what was called "metamathematics.")

A notable early citation is

Douglas Hofstadter, in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach (and in the 1985 sequel, Metamagical Themas), popularized this meaning of the term. The book, which deals with self-reference and strange loops, and touches on Quine and his work, was influential in many computer-related subcultures and may be responsible for the popularity of the prefix, for its use as a solo term, and for the many recent coinages which use it.^[11] Hofstadter uses meta as a stand-alone word, as an adjective, and as a directional preposition ("going meta," a term he coins for the old rhetorical trick of taking a debate or analysis to another level of abstraction, as when somebody says "This debate isn't going anywhere"). This book may also be responsible for the association of "meta" with strange loops, as opposed to just abstraction. According to Hofstadter, it is about self-reference, which means a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes it as "showing or suggesting an explicit awareness of itself or oneself as a member of its category: cleverly self-referential".^[12] The sentence "This sentence contains thirty-six letters," and the sentence which embeds it, are examples of "metasentences" referencing themselves in this way. As maintained in the book Gödel, Escher, Bach, a strange loop is given if different logical statements or theories are put together in contradiction, thus distorting the meaning and generating logical paradoxes. One example is the liar paradox, a paradox in philosophy or logic that arises when a sentence claims its own falsehood (or untruth); for instance: "This sentence is not true." Until the beginning of the 20th century, this kind of paradox was a considerable problem for a philosophical theory of truth. Alfred Tarski solved this difficulty by proving that such paradoxes do not exist with a consistent separation of object language and metalanguage.^[13] "For every formalized language, a formally correct and factually applicable definition of the true statement can be constructed in the metalanguage with the sole help of expressions of a general-logical character, expressions of the language itself and of terms from the morphology of the language, but on the condition that the metalanguage is of a higher order than the language that is the subject of the investigation."^[14]

Meta in gaming

Metagaming is a general term to mean playing a game while exploiting or subverting its rules.

See also

• Benzene § Nomenclature
• Fourth wall
• Metaverse

References