Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [7]

Gribbin (1990: 195-6):

This confirmation that nuclear forces, as well as electric forces, can be thought of purely in terms of interactions between particles is a cornerstone of the physicists' view of the world today.  All forces are now regarded as interactions.  But where do the particles that carry the interactions come from?  They come from nowhere, something for nothing, in accordance with the uncertainty principle.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, (observed) particles are construals of experience as instances of meaning.  The "nowhere" they "come from" is the (theorised) physical potential of which they are actualisations.

The translation of the virtual into the actual is construed grammatically by aspect, which, with tense, is one of the complementary features of time, an inherent property of processes.  Halliday (2008: 35):

The grammar of every language is (in one of its metafunctions, the ideational) a construal of human experience: it constructs our “reality” by transforming our experiences into meanings. And in doing this, the grammar often has to choose: to choose either one way of seeing things, or the other. For example, think of time. Either time is a linear progression, out of future through present into past; or else it is a translation from the virtual into the actual. It can’t be both. We may choose to model it (and note here that I am talking about our grammar — not our theory of grammar, our “grammatics”; so we means the speakers of the language, not the linguists) … so let us say our language may choose to model it either as tense, or as aspect;