The Thoughts Of Ernst Mach Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: xv):

Nobody has ever seen an electron, say, or an atom.  We deduce that there are things we call electrons and atoms because whenever we carry out certain experiments we get results consistent with the existence of atoms and electrons.  But what we actually "know" are sense impressions of readings on meters, or of lights flickering on a screen, not even direct sense impressions of the particles we believe we are investigating.  Ernst Mach … summed the position up in his book Science of Mechanics in 1883:

Atoms cannot be perceived by the senses; like all substances they are things of the thought … a mathematical model for facilitating the mental reproduction of the facts.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, atoms, substances, facts and mathematical models are "things of the thought"; they are meanings construed of experience.  Within the domain of meaning, first-order (material) phenomena, such as atoms, are reconstrued as second-order (semiotic) phenomena, metaphenomena, such as mathematical models.