Sunday, 15 October 2017

The Notion Of Phenomena "Obeying" Physical Rules Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 244):
[Fermions] obey a set of statistical rules known as Fermi-Dirac statistics.  [Bosons] obey a different set of rules called Bose-Einstein statistics;

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, these rules are statements of probability (modalisation), not commands of obligation (modulation), and the notion of (material) particles "obeying" a (semiotic) model of them has the same epistemological status as a (material) landscape "obeying" a (semiotic) topographical map.  This interpersonal metaphor pervades physics and leads to serious epistemological confusions. 

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