It is probable that most physicists would regard the changes in our picture of the world that quantum mechanics has wrought as being far more revolutionary even than the extraordinary curved spacetime of Einstein’s general relativity. Indeed, what quantum theory actually tells us to believe about ‘reality’ at the submicroscopic levels of atoms or of fundamental particles is, as we shall be seeing in this chapter and in the next two, so greatly removed from our ordinary classical pictures that we may choose simply to give up on quantum-level ‘pictures’ altogether. Indeed many physicists appear even to doubt the very existence of a true ‘reality’ at quantum scales and, instead, rely merely upon the quantum-mechanical mathematical formalism to obtain answers.
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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, 'what quantum theory actually tells us' is that meaning does not transcend semiotic systems, and that meaning is instantiated in the act of observation; that reality is the meaning construed of experience.
In this view, there is no need to 'give up on quantum level pictures' or to 'doubt the existence of a true reality at quantum scales'. What is needed is the abandonment of the epistemological assumption that experience is categorised independently of semiotic systems, and that the task of science is to discover those 'true' categories. Instead, science is concerned with reconstruing the phenomenal meaning construed by language as metaphenomenal meaning whose validity is decided by the assumptions, principles and methodologies of science.
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