In Greek, the prefix meta- is generally less esoteric than in English; Greek meta- is equivalent to the Latin wordspost- or ad-. The use of the prefix in this sense occurs occasionally in scientific English terms derived from Greek. For example: the term Metatheria uses the prefix meta- in the sense the Metatheria occur on the tree of life adjacent to the Theria.
Epistemology
In epistemology, and often in common use, the prefix meta- is used to mean about . For example, metadata are data about data. In a database, metadata are also data about data stored in a data dictionary and describe information about database tables such as the table name, table owner, details about columns, – essentially describing the table. Also, metamemory in psychology means an individual's knowledge about whether or not they would remembersomething if they concentrated on recalling it. The modern sense of "an X about X" has given rise to concepts like "meta-cognition", "meta-emotion", "meta-discussion", "meta-joke", and "metaprogramming". In a rule-based system, a is a rule governing the application of other rules.
Any subject can be said to have a metatheory, a theoretical consideration of its properties, such as its s, s, and utility, on a higher level of abstraction. In linguistics, a grammar is considered as being expressed in a metalanguage, language operating on a higher level to describe properties of the plain language.
Etymology
The prefix comes from the Greek preposition and prefix meta-, from μετά, which meant "after", "beside", "with", "among". Other meanings include "beyond", "adjacent" and "self", and it is also used in the form μητα- as a prefix in Greek, with variants μετ- before vowels and μεθ- "meth-" before aspirated vowels. The earliest form of the word "meta" is the Mycenaean Greekme-ta, written in Linear Bsyllabic script. The Greek preposition is cognate with the Old English preposition "with", still found as a prefix in midwife. Its use in English is the result of back-formation from the word "metaphysics". In originMetaphysics was just the title of one of the principal works of Aristotle; it was so named because in the customary ordering of the works of Aristotle it was the book following Physics; it thus meant nothing more than " after Physics". However, even Latin writers misinterpreted this as entailing metaphysics constituted "the science of what is beyond the physical". Nonetheless, Aristotle's Metaphysics enunciates considerations of natures above physical realities, which one can examine through this particular part of philosophy, for example, the existence of God. The use of the prefix was later extended to other contexts based on the understanding of metaphysics to mean "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" going back to 1917. However, these formations are parallel to the original "metaphysics" and "metaphysical", that is, as a prefix to general nouns or adjectives. Going by the OED citations, it began being used with specific nouns in connection with mathematical logic sometime before 1929. A notable early citation is Quine's 1937 use of the word "metatheorem", where meta- has the modern meaning of "an X about X".. Douglas Hofstadter, in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach, 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. Hofstadter uses meta as a stand-alone word, as an adjective and as a directional preposition. This book may also be responsible for the association of "meta" with strange loops, as opposed to just abstraction. The sentence "This sentence contains thirty-six letters," and the sentence which embeds it, are examples of "metasentences" referencing themselves in this way.
