The Distinction Between Mind And Matter Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Russell (1961: 149):

The distinction between mind and matter, which has become a commonplace in philosophy and science and popular thought, has a religious origin, and began as the distinction of soul and body.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, all theorising, including that of the mythological traditions uses language as its raw material.  The distinction between mind and matter derives from the theory of experience construed by the transitivity system of language, namely the distinction between mental processes (sensers sensing) and material processes (doers doing), the former being the means by which the semiotic order of experience is projected into existence.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, one way to understand the difference between mythology and science is that mythology uses lexical metaphor to provide humans with a means of fitting into the physical and social environment, whereas science uses grammatical metaphor to provide humans with a construal of the environment that is as reliable as possible.  It was settled agriculture, and the uneven distribution of wealth and the leisure time it afforded that first made the switch to philosophical and scientific thinking possible.