The Thoughts Of Protagoras And Heraclitus In Systemic Functional Linguistics

Russell (1961: 164):

Returning to perception, it is regarded as due to an interaction between the object and the sense-organ, both of which, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus, are always changing, and both of which, in changing, change the percept.  Socrates remarks that when he is well he finds wine sweet, but when ill, sour.  Here it is a change in the percipient that causes the change in the percept.

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For Plato, this constitutes an argument against the view that knowledge is gained through the senses. In contradistinction, this is the empiricist view that informs Systemic Functional Linguistics. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

… what is being construed by the brain is not the environment as such, but the impact of that environment on the organism and the ongoing material and semiotic exchange between the two.