The Relationship Between Scientific Models And Reality — Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 12, 13, 14):

The relationship between a scientific model and the real system it purports to represent raises some deep issues. … How is one to know when a scientific model is merely a computational device, and when it describes reality? … Scientific theories are supposed to be descriptions of reality; they do not constitute that reality. … However certain we are that our present picture describes how the universe actually is, we cannot rule out the possibility that some new and better way of looking at things, utterly unimaginable to us now, will be discovered in the future.

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To be clear, the view expressed above frames a scientific model as a representation (token) of meaning outside language (value), i.e. reality, the universe, with the model either representing the universe 'as it actually is' or not. And even though, in this view, scientific theories do not constitute that reality, physicists commonly confuse the two, with statements along the lines of 'the universe was made by the laws of physics'.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, on the other hand, what scientific theories model is meaning construed of experience. That is, scientific theories make meaning of meaning: they are second-order meanings with respect to the first-order meanings that they model.

In this view, 'new and better ways of looking at things' emerge because scientific theories are evolving semiotic systems that adapt to the environments in which they function, as the history of science has demonstrated.