Introduction I had two great teachers in epidemiology: Len Syme and Geoffrey Rose. One had his thinking shaped by the insights of Durkheim, a great sociologist; the other by Pickering, a great hypertension specialist. One helped lay the foundations for social epidemiology; the other, if heeded, could change the way we think about public health. Both came to the conclusion that society mattered ...

1 The article describes the foundations of a new theory of communication as the generative core of cultural systems. We define the concepts of meaning and information in terms of complex systems theory; communication is considered as the interplay of social and cognitive dynamics, i.e., interactions between speakers and receivers, which are determined by social and cognitive rules. The theory i...