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.