A stream of meaning flowing through life

As we have often stated, the issues and editorials prefacing Visions for Sustainability have endeavoured to contribute to humanity’s dialogue with nature (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984). Dialogue (dia: “through” – logos: “word” or “signifier”) is described by Bohm (1996) as “a stream of meaning flowing among and through and between us” (p. 6). The stream of meaning that creates the flow of humanity’s dialogue has always been shaped by the evolution of human language and the way in which “we human beings exist and operate as human beings as we operate in language: languaging is our manner of living as human beings” (Maturana, 2002, p.27). Moreover, the sustainability of life itself depends on language as a means of creating the flow, the exchange and the processing of information that enable the biological processes that are vital for all living organisms.