Scientific Truth Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 12):

The case for the scientific world view rests on the claim that science deals with truth. However elegant a scientific theory may be, and no matter how distinguished its originator, if it does not accord with experiment and observation it must be rejected.

This image of science as a pure and objective distillation of real world experience is, of course, an idealisation. In practice, the nature of scientific truth is often much more subtle and contentious.

At the heart of the scientific method is the construction of theories. Scientific theories are essentially models of the real world (or parts thereof), and a lot of the vocabulary of science concerns the models rather than the reality. For example, scientists often use the word 'discovery' to refer to some purely theoretical advance.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the notion that science deals with truth, in sense above, assumes that meanings transcend semiotic systems and are either theorised truthfully or not. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, however, meaning is a property of semiotic systems only, and science is concerned with reconstruing meanings — already construed of experience in language — as theoretical meanings that are realised in language and other attendant semiotic systems made possible by language.

In this view, the accordance of theory with experiment and observation is not objective truth, but what is intersubjectively assessed as valid within the most systematic and self-consistent approach to meaning-making.

Accordingly, science is not a "distillation of real world experience", but a reconstrual of meanings already construed of experience. So scientific theories do model the real world, but in the strict sense that the real world is meaning already construed of experience.

Truth And Reality Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 11):

In breaking with Newtonian materialism we must accept that the objects of our theoretical models and the real entities of the external world bear a much more subtle relationship to each other than was assumed hitherto. Indeed, the very notion of what we mean by truth and reality must go into the melting pot.

 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, "real entities of the external world" are meanings construed of experience as being "the external world". In the case of humans, this involves non-meaning being construed as perceptual meanings, and perceptual meanings being reconstrued as the first-order language meanings (phenomena).

On the other hand, "objects of our theoretical models" are reconstruals of the first-order language meanings (phenomena) as the second-order language meanings (metaphenomena) that realise theories.

From this perspective of meaning as immanent, rather than transcendent, reality is meaning construed of experience, rather than something that transcends semiotic systems.

By the same token, truth is what is interpersonally assessed as valid within a given system of meaning-making.

Relativity Theory, Quantum Theory, Quantum Field Theory, & Superstring Theory Characterised By Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 8):

First came the theory of relativity, which demolished Newton's assumptions about space and time — assumptions which still hold sway in our everyday 'common sense' view of the world. The very arena in which the clockwork universe acted out its drama was now exposed as subject to shifting and warping.

Then came the quantum theory, which totally transformed our image of matter. The old assumption that the microscopic world of atoms was simply a scaled-down version of the everyday world had to be abandoned. Newton's deterministic machine was replaced by a shadowy and paradoxical conjunction of waves and particles, governed by the laws of chance rather than the rigid rules of causality.

An extension of the quantum theory, known as quantum field theory, goes beyond even this; it paints a picture in which solid matter dissolves away, to be replaced by weird excitations and vibrations of invisible field energy. In this theory, little distinction remains between material substance and apparently empty space, which itself seethes with ephemeral quantum activity.

The culmination of these ideas is the so-called superstring theory, which seeks to unite space, time and matter, and to build all of them from the vibrations of sub-microscopic loops of invisible string inhabiting a ten-dimensional imaginary universe.

Blogger Comments:

The General Theory of Relativity models space and time as dimensions that are affected by the presence of matter. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, intervals of space are relatively more contracted with increasing proximity to a centre of mass, whereas intervals of time are relatively more expanded.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the wave-particle duality of Quantum Theory is the duality of potential and instance, with probability ("the laws of chance") being the quantification of that potential, such that the instantiations of potential are the instantiations of probabilities.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, a quantum field is a spatio-temporal domain of quantum instantiations, and excitations of the field (ephemeral quantum activity) are instantiations of quantum potential, whose durations instantiate the probabilities of the potential.

Superstring Theory, on the other hand, is an exploration of the mathematical possibilities of theoretical physics.

Quantum Theory On Physical Reality — Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Robinson (2005: 120):

The picture of physical reality that quantum theory gives us is, however, far from easy to grasp and full of mysteries — beginning with the very concept of wave-particle duality that unavoidably implicates the observer in the question of what is measured: a wave or a particle. In quantum theory physical reality is dependent on the observer and hence on human consciousness. Einstein's lifelong adherence to a physical reality independent of human beings is the one that most of us instinctively feel to be true. For science, this view of reality has been immensely productive from the Ancient Greeks up to the present day.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, however, the picture of physical reality that quantum theory gives us is relatively easy to grasp, whether or not it is deemed to be full of mysteries.

Wave-particle duality is explained as potential-instance duality, and the reason why physical reality is dependent on the consciousness of the observer is that physical reality is meaning construed of experience by language (the semogenic processes of human consciousness).

The notion of 'a physical reality independent of human beings' derives from the notion that meaning is transcendent of semiotic systems, and explains why many physicists believe that they will one day find 'a final theory of everything', since the meaning is 'out there', waiting to be discovered.

However, quantum theory demonstrates that this view is untenable. Meaning is a property of semiotic systems (immanent). The perceived universe is a creation of perceptual systems, which in humans, is further interpreted in terms of language — and other semiotic systems that language makes possible — and reinterpreted in terms of theories construed by language. From this perspective, scientific theorising is an unending evolution of semogenesis (meaning-making).