Einstein's 'Time' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [3]

Gribbin (1990: 191):

The mystics and popularisers who seek to equate Eastern philosophy with modern physics seem to have missed this point [that time stands still for photons], which tells us that everything in the universe, past, present, and future, is connected to everything else, by a web of electromagnetic radiation that "sees" everything at once. Of course, photons can be created and destroyed, so the web is incomplete.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, if time stands still for a photon, then a photon is not itself a process that unfolds in time — analogous to the ticking process of a locomoting clock — and, if it is not a process that unfolds in time, then no processes can be ascribed to it, not even a metaphorical process of "seeing".

On the other hand, the creation, locomotion and destruction of a photon are material processes that a photon does participate in, and so, which do unfold in time, just as the creation, locomotion and destruction of a clock are material processes that a clock participates in, and which do unfold in time.