The Limitations Of Scientific Truth Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 19-20, 22):

The difficulties concerning the relationship between abstract models and reality do not, however, undermine the claim that science deals with truth. Clearly, scientific theories — even in the most abstract form — capture some element of reality. But one may certainly question whether science can deliver the whole truth. …

It may be wondered whether science will always be limited in this respect. Is it possible to imagine that future developments will enable science to answer the ultimate questions and to deal with total reality? The answer would seem to be 'no'; for, remarkably, science contains within itself a description of its own limitations. …

Quantum mechanics seems to impose an inherent limitation on what science can tell us about the world, and it reduces to mere models entities that we used to regard as real in their own right.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the relationship between reality and abstract models is the relationship between data, meanings construed of experience, and the reconstrual of those meanings as scientific theory. The "truth" of a scientific theory is its validity in terms of scientific criteria.

The notion of a 'whole truth' that science can deliver takes a transcendent view of meaning, such that meaning also lies outside semiotic systems, and science is a matter of identifying those meanings truthfully. However, the findings of Quantum mechanics invalidate the transcendent view of meaning, since they demonstrate that phenomena are not 'real' until they are observed as instances of potential.

Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, on the other hand, takes an immanent view of meaning, such that meaning is restricted to semiotic systems, and science is a matter of reconstruing the meanings of semiotic systems. In this view, there is no 'whole truth' or 'ultimate questions', since there is no meaning outside semiotic systems to eventually identify truthfully. Instead, the march of science is an ongoing evolution of meaning-making.