The Epistemological Status Of Models Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 278):

It reminds us that all our models of fundamental particles and their interactions are no more than artificial aids to help us get a picture of what is going on in terms that seem familiar, or at least recognisable, from everyday life.  But it is ironic that as the quark model has become increasingly well established, in recent years many accounts of particle physics seem to have lost sight of the fact that even the best of our models are no more than aids to the imagination, and those accounts have begun to present an image of photons, neutrons, and the rest as made up of "real" little hard lumps, the quarks, which rattle around inside what we used to think of as the "fundamental" particles.  The image is beguilingly reminiscent of the earlier vision of the atom as being made up of little hard lumps, electrons, protons and neutrons — and it is just as inaccurate.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, observations of fundamental particles and their interactions (i.e. data) are construals of experience as first-order meaning (phenomena) whereas models of fundamental particles and their interactions (i.e. theories) are reconstruals of first-order meaning as second-order meaning (metaphenomena).

The wording "no more than" enacts the interpersonal meaning 'counter-expectancy: limiting'.