Science As "Extensional" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 233):

The subsequent development of the computer…reinforced the ideas of efficiency and rigour and the deductive flavour that had already characterised much of physical science. The "neat" deductive formal background of computers, the link with mathematical physics, and the success of the hard sciences looked endlessly extensible. There was a natural tendency to stop a philosophical analysis of scientific exploration at the surface of the human body (the skin and its receptors). Behaviour could be analysed, but not phenomenal experience. In this way, science could remain "extensional," as W. V. Quine put it, and one could declare with him that "to be is to be a value of a variable."

Blogger Comments:

As previously noted, science is concerned with what Galileo distinguished as 'primary qualities' (as opposed to 'secondary qualities'), and what Descartes termed 'res extensa' (as opposed to 'res cogitans').  It is in this Cartesian sense that science 'could remain' "extensional".

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, this means that science is concerned with construals of experience of the non-semiotic domain as material-relational meaning (as opposed to mental-verbal meaning).  It is the mental-verbal domain of meaning that constitutes 'phenomenal experience' in this context.