The Anthropic Principle Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1990: 251-2):

The greatest question left to answer within this framework is why our perception of reality should be what it is — why should the choice of paths through the quantum maze that started out in the Big Bang and leads to us have been just the right kind of path for the appearance of intelligence in the universe?

The answer lies in an idea often referred to as the "anthropic principle."  This says that the conditions that exist in our universe are the only conditions, apart from small variations, that could have allowed life like us to evolve, and so it is inevitable that any intelligent species like us should look out upon a universe like the one we see about us.  If the universe wasn't the way it is, we wouldn't be here to observe it.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the "intelligence" of Homo sapiens is the greater potential afforded by language to make meaning of experience, in comparison to the semiotic systems of other species.

It will be seen in later discussions of the anthropic principle, that one type of cause, result, is frequently misconstrued as another type of cause, purpose, both of which can be realised by 'so that…'.  That is, humanity is misconstrued as the purpose of the unfolding of the universe, rather than one of its myriad results.

The term 'anthropic' is anthropocentric in this usage, since the principle applies to everything, not just humans.  It could just as accurately be termed 'the Higgs boson principle', 'the potassium sulphate principle' or 'the seaweed principle'.