The Senior Common Room was unusually still.
Outside, autumn had quietly given way to winter. Frost lay across the college lawns, and the old stone buildings seemed almost luminous beneath a pale afternoon sky.
Professor Quillibrace was reading.
Miss Stray was writing.
Mr Blottisham was looking thoughtfully into the fire.
No one spoke for several minutes.
At last Blottisham said,
"I've been wondering about words."
Quillibrace looked up.
"I'm delighted."
"I don't think they carry meanings."
The Professor smiled.
"No?"
"No."
Another silence.
Miss Stray looked from one to the other.
"I rather expected a question."
"So did I," said Blottisham.
Quillibrace closed his book.
"I don't think one is necessary."
Blottisham laughed.
"That's disappointing."
"Is it?"
"I've become rather fond of your questions."
"I had noticed."
The Professor poured three cups of tea.
"So."
Blottisham took his cup.
"I've been thinking about our first conversation."
"The neuron?"
"Yes."
"I thought nouns were inside neurons."
"And now?"
"I think nouns belong to a linguistic construal."
Quillibrace nodded.
"And the genes?"
"They participate in development."
"The particles?"
"They don't seem to carry little collections of properties."
"The models?"
"They organise ways of seeing."
"The brain?"
"It participates in thinking."
"The information?"
Blottisham smiled.
"It happens."
The room became quiet again.
Finally Quillibrace asked,
"And the words?"
Blottisham looked into his tea.
"I don't think meanings are inside them."
"What changed your mind?"
Blottisham considered for a long time.
"You never actually told me."
"No?"
"No."
"You simply..."
He laughed softly.
"...kept asking impossible questions."
Miss Stray smiled.
"They were usually rather ordinary questions."
"Exactly."
Blottisham looked pleased.
"That's what made them impossible."
Quillibrace said nothing.
Blottisham continued.
"I kept looking inside things."
"Yes."
"And every time..."
He searched for the words.
"...the phenomenon turned out to belong to the relations instead."
The Professor remained silent.
Miss Stray leaned forward.
"I've been thinking about that."
"Oh?"
"We've spent weeks saying that meanings aren't inside words."
"Yes."
"But I think there's another way of saying it."
Blottisham looked interested.
"What is it?"
She glanced around the room.
"I don't think words carry meanings."
"No?"
"I think conversations actualise them."
No one spoke.
Outside, a rook crossed slowly above the quadrangle.
Quillibrace eventually said,
"A beautiful sentence."
Miss Stray smiled faintly.
"It isn't quite finished."
"No?"
"The conversation doesn't actualise meaning by itself."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
"No."
"It requires..."
He looked around the room.
"...all of this."
"The room?"
"The books."
"The years."
"The language."
"The questions."
"The disagreements."
"The tea."
Miss Stray laughed.
"The tea?"
"I refuse to surrender the tea."
Quillibrace laughed quietly.
"Entirely reasonable."
The fire settled softly.
Blottisham became serious again.
"I think I've finally understood something."
"What is it?"
"I used to imagine philosophy was about finding better answers."
"And now?"
"I think it's about learning to ask better questions."
Quillibrace looked into the fire.
"That has certainly been my experience."
Another silence.
The college chapel bell sounded in the distance.
Miss Stray closed her notebook.
"I wonder..."
"What is it?"
"If we've misunderstood explanation itself."
Blottisham looked at her.
"How?"
"We keep explaining phenomena by looking for where they are."
"Yes."
"But perhaps explanation begins when we ask..."
She paused.
"...how they become."
The room was perfectly still.
Quillibrace slowly removed his spectacles.
"My dear Miss Stray."
"Yes?"
"I don't think there is anything I could usefully add."
Blottisham looked surprised.
"Nothing?"
The Professor smiled.
"Very little."
Blottisham looked around the old room.
The shelves.
The fireplace.
The worn leather chairs.
The windows through which the late afternoon light now entered.
"You know..."
"What?"
"When I first came here..."
"Yes?"
"...I thought we were discussing neuroscience."
Miss Stray laughed.
"So did I."
"And then genetics."
"Yes."
"And then quantum physics."
"And models."
"And brains."
"And information."
He shook his head gently.
"We weren't discussing any of those things at all."
Quillibrace looked at him.
"No?"
"No."
"What were we discussing?"
Blottisham smiled.
"The strange habit human beings have..."
He paused.
"...of hiding relations inside nouns."
For perhaps the first time since Miss Stray had known him, Professor Quillibrace laughed without restraint.
When at last the laughter subsided, he raised his teacup.
"To Mr Blottisham."
Blottisham looked startled.
"Me?"
"You have become most inconvenient."
"I have?"
"You no longer say the things I expect."
Miss Stray lifted her own cup.
"I think that's called learning."
Quillibrace looked at her.
"Perhaps."
Blottisham raised his cup too.
"I should like to propose a final toast."
The others waited.
"To conversations."
"Conversations?"
"Not because they contain ideas."
He smiled.
"But because..."
He looked from one friend to the other.
"...they are among the places where ideas become possible."
The three cups met gently.
Outside, evening settled over St Anselm's.
Inside, three old friends continued talking long after the fire had burned low.
No one recorded what was said.
No one needed to.
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