Physical Fields Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 440):

In the period between the introduction of Newton’s superb dynamical scheme, which we can best date as the publication of his Principia in 1687, and the appearance of special relativity theory, which could reasonably be dated at Einstein’s first publication on the subject, in 1905, many important developments in our pictures of fundamental physics took place. The biggest shift that occurred in this period was the realisation, mainly through the 19th century work of Faraday and Maxwell, that some notion of physical field, permeating space, must coexist with the previously held ‘Newtonian reality’ of individual particles interacting via instantaneous forces. Later, this ‘field’ notion also became a crucial ingredient of Einstein’s 1915 curved-spacetime theory of gravity. What are now called the classical fields are, indeed, the electromagnetic field of Maxwell and the gravitational field of Einstein.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, a physical field is an extent, a circumstance of processes, not a thing. On this basis, a physical field does not 'permeate' space, it is space — an extent of space.

And as previously explained, from this perspective, in the Theory of General Relativity, it is not spacetime (circumstance) that is curved, but the motion (process) of bodies (things) — geodesic trajectories — through spacetime.