Gravity Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Hawking (1988: 173):

In this book I have given special prominence to the laws that govern gravity, because it is gravity that shapes the large-scale structure of the universe, even though it is the weakest of the four categories of forces. The laws of gravity were incompatible with the view held until quite recently that the universe is unchanging in time: the fact that gravity is always attractive implies that the universe must be either expanding or contracting. According to the general theory of relativity, there must have been a state of infinite density in the past, the big bang, which would have been an effective beginning of time.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the laws of gravity (metaphenomena) don't govern gravity (phenomenon).  The laws of gravity are reconstruals of gravity as the General Theory of Relativity.

From the perspective of the General Theory of Relativity, gravity is not a force, but a consequence of the geometry of space-time under the influence of matter. (It is because gravity is nevertheless construed as a force that physicists believe that it needs to be unified with the three forces that are modelled in terms of particle exchange.)

Although gravity is always attractive, gravity (local contraction of space) and the cosmological expansion of space can be understood as opposite polarities of one and the same phenomenon.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the beginning of time corresponds with the beginning of the unfolding of processes, of which time is the dimension of measurement.