Einstein's 'Time' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [5]

Gribbin (1990: 191-2):

Imagine a Feynman diagram that encompassed all of space and time, with the tracks of every particle laid out on it.  Now imagine viewing that diagram through a narrow slot that only allows a limited segment of time to be scanned, and move the slot steadily up the page.  Through the slot, we see a complex dance of interacting particles, pair production, annihilation, and far more complex events, an ever-changing panorama.  All we are doing, though, is scanning something that is fixed in space and time.  It is our perception that alters, not the underlying reality.  Because we are locked into a steadily moving viewing slot, we see a positron moving forward in time rather than an electron moving backward in time, but both interpretations are equally real.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the notion of a particle moving forward or backward in time, rather than enduring in time, is a category error.

The imagined Feynman diagram construes experience as a static image, with both the duration in time and the movement in space of particles represented as lines. That is, the diagram itself construes a static universe — and takes a God's eye view.

What we call "reality" is meaning construed of experience — in the first instance, of perceptual experience.