Uncertainty As An Intrinsic Quality Of Nature Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 213):

We have encountered the uncertainty principle in our discussion of quantum chaos, the nature of the vacuum and the origin of time. This is the same uncertainty that also affects energy and time, and tells us that virtual particles can pop briefly out of nothing at all, and vanish again. Such quantum uncertainty is not merely a result of human clumsiness. It is an intrinsic quality of nature. However accurate and powerful our instruments may be, we cannot beat the inherent fuzziness of quantum uncertainty.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the uncertainty that the authors describe as an intrinsic quality of nature is an intrinsic quality of construing experience as meaning. Moreover, it demonstrates that meaning involves both the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions, the latter in evidence through the inherent uncertainty (modalisation) in the instantiation of meaning.