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Hey, Mike--
I didn't say that I had built my career on the premise that words have multiple meanings, but rather that I had staked my life on it, actually taking every possible opportunity to multiply them...

...which probably explains why (!) I'm still trying to understand better why you find it useful to limit the number of meanings available-and-applicable in any given case. I'm perhaps even more curious about how you go about making such selections. So let's pick up here? When--having acknowledged that several alternative meanings are listed in the dictionary, and so @ least theoretically possible--you say "I'll stick to my meaning and avoid the implications of the second, if others will allow," I actually find myself not quite willing to "allow" that move, at least not without your explaining its back story and motivation. I'm curious about the process that goes into such a selection and limitation of one meaning among several possible alternatives: on what grounds do you make such a choice? On what presumptions does it rest? Are they acknowledged? What purposes does that particular definition serve for you? What does it allow you to argue, that the second definition, for example, might not enable? If you "need" a particular definition, to achieve a certain end, mightn't you be begging the question you want to answer? Constructing a circular argument?

I think I understand how the scientific method works as well as it does: restricting the meaning of words and limiting the scope of reference enables scientists to construct and work within formal, consistent, (more) controllable systems. But another way science works, surely, is through the counter-move of the kind of open-mindedness to anomalies and alternatives w/ which your posting concludes. I'd say that it's actually not the case that "to add to the story of science one needs to operate within the existing story." I'm thinking, specifically, of Galileo. I'm thinking, more recently, of a series of recent brown bag discussions, in which it was suggested that scientists dismiss outliers as  "procedural errors," until enough of them accumulate to actually change the existing story (think: the growing recognition of the growing hole in the ozone layer). I'm thinking, more generally, of Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shifts: extraordinary science, constituted by explicit refusals to operate within the existing story.  I'm thinking, more popularly, of Lisa Belkin's wonderful 2002 NYTimes Magazine article on "The Odds of That," which asks how we decide what's random and what's relevant: when are we "making up" highly improbable patterns in large data sets? When might they become the key to a new story or pattern not yet seen?

Finally, I'm thinking of the ethics of using the life experiences--aka the so-called "wrong world views"-- of others as metaphors, or vehicles, for constructing our own "right ones," rather than trying to understand why others may construct the world as they do: what useful purposes might such constructions (such multiple meanings) serve--both for them and for us? (For an experiment in this direction, see Adjectives of Order...)