I'm actually working on something that goes a step deeper than
   communication. And that's metaphor. I believe all knowledge,
   understanding and purpose can be analogized to analogy - to
   metaphor.

   I believe metaphor is stronger than mathematics, because
   mathematics _is_ metaphorical. That it happens to also be
   functional and correspond well to physics, to me, increases the
   proof. Metaphors are extraordinarily powerful things. I believe
   it is how we build up knowledge. I also believe metaphors are
   similar shapes - rather like Forms yet not quite Plato here.

   A bacteria will happily accept a virus if it happens to be the
   right shape. The virus is a metaphor; the bacteria behaves "as
   if" the virus is the same shape as something it typically
   expects to see.

   That leads into memory which is the other key feature I believe
   all things in the Universe require to even be here and function
   at all:

   Hysteresis. Lag. Memory. Someday I may write it all up together
   in a 'thing', or maybe I won't.

   But yes, communication and memory. Notice how many metaphors I
   used in this message. I didn't count them, but our languages are
   FULL of metaphors that we forgot are metaphors.