The Spatial Curvature Of The Universe Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 162-3):

The theory of relativity provides a connection between the rate of expansion and the average spatial curvature of the Universe. For the critical case of exactly balanced expansion the spatial curvature is zero — space is flat on the large scale. …

A helpful way to understand this result is to imagine an intelligent ant on the surface of a grape. Such a creature might easily determine that the surface of the grape is curved. But if the grape were swelled in size by 64 doublings the ant would never be able to detect the now tiny curvature of the surface it walked upon.

 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, any relative spatial curvature of the Universe provided by the General Theory is actually a relative curvature of the geodesic trajectory taken by a body through space, not a relative curvature of the three spatial dimensions.

This is borne out by the example of an ant on the surface of a grape. The curvature is not of space, but of its potential trajectories across the surface of the grape.