The Distinction Between The Reality And The Model — Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 14):

But in certain branches of physics it is not always so easy [to distinguish between the reality and the model]. The concept of energy, for example, is a familiar one today, yet it was originally introduced as a purely theoretical quantity in order to simplify the physicists' description of mechanical and thermodynamical processes. We cannot see or touch energy, yet we accept that it really exists because are so used to discussing it.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the distinction between 'the reality' and the model is the distinction between the first-order meanings (of everyday language) and the second-order meanings that are the reconstruals of first-order meanings in scientific theories. In the case of the notion of energy, this is the distinction between a general concept such as power, and such scientific reconstruals as potential and kinetic energy. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, energy is the ability of a process to unfold and the instantiation of that potential.

From this perspective, however, 'reality' is the meaning construed of experience, and so actually includes both first-order meanings and the second-order meanings construed of them in scientific theories. The question then is whether or not the second-order meaning (the model) is assessed as valid.