Semantics: Meanings and Contexts of Artifacts

English dictionaries trace the origin of the word, 'experience' to knowledge of or skill in making experiments. Its etymology suggests an important conceptual truth: experiences are not merely personal and subjective but crucially related to interacting with something of interest, an artifact, an activity, or a situation involving other people. What we will explore here must therefore overcome the objective/subjective Cartesian dichotomy and be concerned instead with how humans experience the world by acting on it and creating it.