To begin with, we live in a net of meaning. But what do we mean by meaning?
When someone says ``Good morning!'', what does that mean? It means that the time of the utterance is in the morning (say between 7:00 and 11:00 a.m.); it means that the speaker observes the habitual social politeness; but if this sentence is uttered in late afternoon, it may mean that the speaker is laughing at you, or if she means it, she must be somewhat insane or at least a little absent-minded; if she says these words cheerfully, it may mean that she had a nice sleep; if, however, she says them cheerlessly, it means that she didn't sleep well or may be sick; it may mean that she grew up in a region with a particular English dialect, it may also mean that she is not a native English speaker -- all depends on her pronunciation; it may mean that she is timid; it may mean that she is arrogant; ... and so on and so forth. As it is all too often the case, if we ask what an utterance means, we will end up with a caboodle of defining or describing sentences. If, however, we ask further what the answering sentences mean, we begin to wander aimlessly in a ``net of meaning.''
Strangely enough, we nevertheless seem to know what ``Good morning!'' means. A second look at this matter shows that our understanding of meaning is not only about the meaning of a word or an utterance. Meaning is about our ``lives!'' We work, play, learn, or rest, and all these activities seem to make sense. Furthermore, the meaning of these activities is not just about the minimum goal of life -- to survive. My preparation for a better education for myself or for my child seems to go beyond the minimal purpose. Few will disagree that it certainly means something more. But then what does it mean?
It may be argued that this is an ill-posed question and may blur the issue of ``the meaning of meaning.'' Indeed, when we ask what our life ``means,'' we are actually asking the purpose, which is, roughly speaking, in the subjective (intentional) realm. As an endeavor to restore the exactness of science, one might suggest that there are in fact two kinds of meaning: a ``ghost-free'' meaning such as smoke ``means'' fire; and a ``subjective'' meaning that has to do with intention. In the former case, it is believed, we are talking about a substantial connection between a symbol and an object or an objective property. And this is to be distinguished from teleological or intentional meaning, the latter case mentioned, which is subjective in essence.
It is this dichotomy that has nourished in some respects the belief that semantics can be either treated as a stand-alone discipline in which intention has its say, or as a reduction of ``exact science'' in which the apparent intention is to be explained away or precluded on account of objective physical properties. In the first category, as the students of literature critics may be prone to, one seems to find a comfortable place for either a Cartesian dualist standpoint or an idealist standpoint. In the second category, as a computer scientist (or a Chomskyan linguist) may be prone to, while Cartesian dualism is still attractive, a naive physicalist stance (that there is no such thing as pure mind except physical phenomena) is perhaps taken more often. Since the workers in the first camp likely would not bother to call themselves ``scientists,'' let us concentrate on the view taken by the second camp.
Unfortunately, modern physical science can not back up the naive physicalist view of the second camp. On the contrary, quantum mechanics implies a position against dividing subjective minds from observed physical objects. At this moment, whenever a physicist asks herself seriously what physical reality is in the hope that it will offer the final support of physical meaning, she is doomed to become lost in the net of (physical) meaning. This is because physical reality suffers a crisis of meaning (albeit not admitted by most physicists), which led Heisenberg to think that the problem in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is linguistic in essence.
A view started with the consideration of physical properties does not have to lead to naive physicalist reductionism or dualism. Nor does it have to end in aimless linguistic wandering. In fact, quantum mechanics has something very profound to say about the question of meaning. According to quantum mechanics, if not actually being measured, mathematical symbols cannot take any physical manifestation. That is, mathematical symbols are physically meaningless and therefore cannot contribute to a serious reductionist account of objective linguistic meaning or logical truthfulness.
For one thing, mathematical symbols themselves do not mean anything concrete. Their meaning is embedded in the context in which they appear. (A mathematical discourse usually begins with ``Let 
be 
...''.) Indeed, mathematics as a whole is an abstract enterprise of mathematical context. In quantum mechanics, the situation is very similar, only here physical meaning is concerned. That is to say, the framework of meaning (physical meaning -- the physical properties pointed out by symbols in a mathematical formalism) in the quantum world is enfolded in the context of apparently ``meaningless'' symbols.
Like our apparently endless searching for meaning on a linguistic net of meaning, reality in quantum mechanics lies in a net of meaning as well. This view of physics suggests that we might be able to profit by looking at linguistics.