A-Series: Meaning System Science
Foundational Canon
The A-Series contains the foundational monographs that define Meaning System Science. These works establish the field’s scientific structure, variables, and laws, and explain how meaning behaves as a proportional system across truth, signals, structure, drift, and regulation.
Foundational Monographs
Why today’s institutions needed a new science and the responsibility the Institute was created to carry.
The model that reveals the structural variables behind how people make sense of their work.
A3 · The Scientific Lineage of Meaning
The story of the thinkers whose discoveries made the science possible.
The law that explains why some systems stay coordinated as they become, and why others do not.
The vantage point that lets us read systems through relationships instead of guesses or assumptions.
A6 · The General Theory of Interpretation
The classification that shows interpretation behaves like a system across human and machine environments.
A-Series: MSS Canon
The Charter
Meaning System Science
The Scientific Lineage of Meaning
The Physics of Becoming
Proportionism
The General Theory of Interpretation
B-Series: Applied Science
C-Series: Meaning-System Governance
D-Series: Technical Standards
LDP 1.0
3E Standard™
3E Method™
Institute Resources
Official Terminology
Citation Guidelines
Essential Reading
About the Institute
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, The Beautyful Ones, 2012.
© Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro.
Featured with The General Theory of Interpretation as a visual parallel to layered meaning-systems: a human figure situated within overlapping signals, contexts, and structural cues. The work reflects how interpretation emerges from multiple interdependent environments, unified through a consistent underlying architecture.
Featured Monograph
The General Theory of Interpretation
October 2025
This monograph formalizes Meaning System Science as the General Theory of Interpretation. It explains why the variables and system dynamics described in the A-Series constitute a unified scientific account of how interpretive behavior works across human, organizational, and artificial environments. The paper clarifies the historical gap, the structural criteria for general theories, and the implications for research, governance, and applied practice.
The Charter of the Transformation Management Institute
Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930
© Mondrian/Holtzman Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Featured with Meaning System Science as a visual metaphor for structural proportion: independent variables held in disciplined relation, coherence created through constrained geometry, and meaning emerging from the balanced interaction of truth, signal, and structure.
Monograph A2
Meaning System Science
October 2025
Meaning System Science establishes the General Theory of Interpretation. It defines how truth, signals, structure, drift, and regulation interact as one proportional system, making meaning a measurable and predictable scientific object.
Hilma af Klint, The Swan (No. 17, Group IX/SU), 1915.
© The Hilma af Klint Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Featured with The Scientific Lineage of Meaning as a visual metaphor for converging lineages. Distinct forms meet in structured balance, mirroring how five scientific traditions resolve into the architecture of Meaning System Science.
Featured Foundations: A Series
The Scientific Lineage of Meaning
Traces the scientific lineage that made Meaning System Science possible. Through the lives and discoveries of Tarski, Saussure, Bertalanffy, Prigogine, and Barrett, this monograph shows how five independent breakthroughs revealed the structural conditions of interpretation and now form a unified scientific architecture.
Monograph A4
The Physics of Becoming
October 2025
The Physics of Becoming introduces the First Law of Moral Proportion: the equation that determines whether a system can change without losing integrity. While Meaning System Science describes how meaning behaves, this paper explains the physics of transformation itself.
This law is the foundation of Transformation Science and the basis for all diagnostic and applied tools that follow.
Donald Judd, Untitled (Stack), 1967
© Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Featured with Proportionism as a visual metaphor for relational order: stability created through repeated ratio, structural coherence emerging from calibrated spacing and consistent proportion.
Monograph A5
Proportionism: The Epistemic Stance of Meaning Systems Science
October 2025
Proportionism clarifies how to read the sciences of meaning as one integrated system. It explains the stance needed to see truth, power, structure, and drift in proper relationship. This paper helps leaders and practitioners understand meaning not as intuition but as a proportional pattern that can be interpreted with clarity.