To many of us, symbols are vague, emotional, arguable, and lack any 'real' measurable substance.
Sounds like a great opportunity to formulate a better description...
A symbol can be anything, such as a flower, or a tree, or a family. And from there we attach meanings to these systems. So a flower can mean love, a tree can mean wisdom, and a family can mean love and wisdom. It all seems pretty subjective, and lots of things can mean lots of things, to lots of different people.
For example, how does one quantify the energy found in text, images, photos, logos and other objects? It seems to me that meaningful designs must contain energy - a type of energy that makes people think and move. But how is this energy defined? How does one symbol act upon another?
What about the famously discussed Law of Attraction? Can a mind attract things? Do ideas interact across a type of gravitational field?
Thought theory seeks to reframe some fundamental laws of psychology to the scope of physics, and explain the forces acting upon symbolic structures within an abstract space shared across minds.
I hope that we will someday create a hyper-dimensional map of symbols, and use it to navigate a hidden world of ideas.
Reducing or re-ordering complexity in abstract space might be the solution for eliminating or drastically reducing the possibilities of war, famine, poverty, and pain. Alternatively, it should foster community, opportunity, joy, and safety.