'Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?' Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Hawking (1988: 174):

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, what we view as, think of, and call 'the universe' is a construal of experience of the non-semiotic domain as (first-order) meaning by the processes of consciousness.  Models that describe the universe are reconstruals of that meaning as the (second-order) meaning of theories.

The question of why the universe exists is a matter of second-order meaning, and it conflates two distinct types of cause: reason vs purpose.  Physical science is concerned with the why of reason (causes of effects).  If purpose is limited to conscious beings, then applying it to the entire universe constitutes a category error.  The notion of the universe bothering to exist makes this category error, since 'bothering' is a behavioural process, and as such, limited to conscious beings.