That’s like saying that rainbows do not require color. Any time you find objective patterns (i.e. order), you have found rational meaning that can be translated into another rational pattern, such as English, Chinese, etc.
In fact, speaking of definitions for science (as opposed to pseudoscience), a very simple, effective way to define science is to say that it is the study of patterns in nature and society. Chemists study patterns among the elements, leading to the development of tools such as periodic tables. Biologists study patterns among organisms, resulting in charts such as the one for taxonomic rank: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species. Astronomers study patterns among stars. Economists study patterns in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Psychologists study patterns in human behavior. Physicists study patterns in matter and energy, discovering such sentences as “Force equals mass times acceleration” and “Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared”. We use the verb equal to indicate the presence of order, where one side matches the other.
Everywhere we look in nature we find similar such rational, creative patterns that we can translate into English, etc. Some of the patterns are simple, such as the curve of a seashell or the branching of a tree, both of which follow the pattern that we call the golden ratio, 1.618…, which is an irrational number, like pi. Other patterns, such as the changes in a quantum wave function, are so complex that they use imaginary numbers, as discovered by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Such equations describe and reveal the profoundly rational order within nature. As Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge University, put it, “Science advances by discerning patterns and regularities in nature, so that more and more phenomena can be subsumed into general categories and laws.” There is are no laws or categories which cannot be found in a dictionary–i.e. which don’t have meaningful definitions.
There may be more to science than the study of rational patterns, but there is not less. Now calling patterns rational is a redundant repetition that I use for the sake of clarity: it is impossible to rationally, objectively declare that nature is not a medium for rational meaning–just like it is impossible to rationally declare that this pattern of black symbols that you’re staring at is not a medium for rational (or irrational!) meaning.
As to whether rational meaning can exist without rational authors…well I suppose that we ourselves cannot rationally author the answer to that question !