How did "meta" come to mean self-referential?

Question

Meta is a very commonly-used term meaning self-referential.

Oxford defines it as:

(Of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential:

the enterprise is inherently ‘meta’, since it doesn’t review movies, for example, it reviews the reviewers who review movies

But the 'origin' section of the entry redirects here, and there's no apparant link with self-reference. It's not much help, apart from stating the usage started from the '80s.

Etymonline has an entry for the meta- prefix, but not meta the adjective.

Does anyone know exactly when and how meta came to mean self-referential?

"Going beyond" or "rising above", so that one make get a perspective from the outside seems like a pretty straightforward evolution to me. It was certainly used before the 80s; I first encountered it in Gödel, Escher, Bach, which was written in the late 70s (79?), IIRC. — Dan Bron, May 10 '15 at 17:51
@DanBron: Interesting take, but by that definition, a "Making-of" documentary would be a meta-movie too. Instead of the current restriction on the sense that a work must reference itself from within — Tushar Raj, May 10 '15 at 17:54
Oh no, no, a documentary is a meta movie, no question about it. Any "rising above" is meta. When works do it about themselves, that of course is meta as well: the specific kind of meta which is self-referential (what Hostadter calls a Strange Loop. BTW, do you know what Hofstadter's motto is? "I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym") — Dan Bron, May 10 '15 at 17:58
Meta, as self-referential feedback, can also be seen as cybernetic. The word derives from the Greek word kybernētēs meaning helmsman, pilot, and governor. Cyberneticians assume that things which act as autonomous units of adaptive behaviour, be they molecules, humans, machines or web sites, do so because they possess a control mechanism. The control mechanism, together with what it actually controls, are best regarded as constituting a system. Since a control mechanism is an integral part of a system, it is very difficult to study the one without the other. Meta is our control mechanism. — , May 10 '15 at 19:06

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 21 '17 at 06:47

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It originally meant something like "after". Possibly the most prominent use of this sense is the title of Aristotle's Metaphysics, so called because it constitutes those things which are to be studied after one has learned physics.

This text wound up founding the discipline which we today call "metaphysics", and one way to describe what this subject encompasses is that it covers things at a level of abstraction above physics.

This sort of meaning became applied retroactively to the prefix, and we began building words in that sense, often by applying the root word to itself. Take for example metaknowledge, knowledge at a higher level of abstraction than standard knowledge, or knowledge about knowledge. Eventually, this reflexive sense became a new usage in its own right.

edited Jan 21 '17 at 06:47

Tushar Raj

21,025

answered May 10 '15 at 17:50

Colin P. Hill

407

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@Area51DetectiveFiction It's more than a useful answer, it is the answer. Check out what Etymonline has to say: "Third sense, 'higher than, transcending, overarching, dealing with the most fundamental matters of'" is due to misinterpretation of metaphysics as 'science of that which transcends the physical'" This has led to a prodigious erroneous extension in modern usage, with meta- affixed to the names of other sciences and disciplines, especially in the academic jargon of literary criticism.". – Dan Bron May 10 '15 at 18:13
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Finally, in this question I have found a justification for the hours I have spent studying classical philosophy – Colin P. Hill May 10 '15 at 18:31
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@Malnormalulo: Every human being gets justification for reading philosophy the moment they are born. Pity so few of them actually do it. – Tushar Raj May 10 '15 at 19:09
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To expand on the Aristotle bit: Aristotle first wrote "Physics" and then another, untitled, book, on a subject we would today call "metaphysics". When it was published centuries later the publisher obviously couldn't contact Aristotle but needed a title. Since the Ancient Greek word for "after" is "μετα" (= meta) and it was the book after "φυσικη" (= physics) he simply called it "μετά φυσικη" (= meta fysikē), "after physics". – 11684 May 10 '15 at 20:38
"It originally meant something like after" - you can scratch the "something like". – 11684 May 10 '15 at 20:39
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@11684: We are lucky that it was Aristotle (or at least his publisher) coining the usage. Imagine it would come up today. Metaphysics would then be called "Physics - The sequel" – skymningen May 11 '15 at 07:34
@11684 I tend to hedge my bets when defining foreign prepositions -- it's hard to be sure that there isn't some totally alien sense not captured by a one-word gloss – Colin P. Hill May 11 '15 at 22:46
Well, it also meant "together", but my (Ancient) Greek dictionary lists literally "after". – 11684 May 12 '15 at 07:03
To be totally honest, I also didn't feel like breaking out a dictionary to verify one detail of an answer I could otherwise give from memory – Colin P. Hill May 14 '15 at 00:49
@11684 To say that it originally meant ‘after’ is blatantly false. It originally meant ‘with, among, in the midst of’ (taking dative or genitive), whence by productive case-governance extension ‘moving towards being with, among, in the midst of’ with the accusative. From there, it gained the secondary meaning ‘in pursuit of’ (if you're moving towards being in the midst of something, you're essentially pursuing it), which was generalised to mean ‘after, following’. Within Ancient Greek, ‘after’ is among the last meanings that developed, not the first. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 21 '17 at 09:19
@JanusBahsJacquet I never said it was the first sense ever in the Greek language, I only said it was the meaning of the word as originally used by the publisher of the book Metaphysics. "Originally" as in "when Ancient Greek was still spoken and before people made up the meta = self-referential bit". – 11684 Jan 21 '17 at 09:23
@11684 I should have been clearer: I was replying to your second comment, not the first one. In the answer, that meaning of μετά is given generally, rather than in the context of the title specifically, so removing the hedging would make the first sentence (at least somewhat) misleading. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 21 '17 at 09:29
@JanusBahsJacquet Fair point. – 11684 Jan 21 '17 at 09:30

How did "meta" come to mean self-referential?

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