Symbols: Meaning Is Assigned, Not Natural

A symbol is anything that stands for something else because a group of people has agreed it does — and for no other reason. Leslie White put it plainly: a symbol’s meaning is bestowed on it by the people who use it, never discovered inside it. That is why a colour, a gesture, or a sound can mean one thing here and its opposite three borders away. Tap a symbol below, then read it from a different place and watch what happens to the meaning while the thing itself never moves.