The Reality Of Mathematical Descriptions Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 631-2):

Bearing this in mind, let us raise the question as to whether these zig and zag particles are ‘real’. Or are they perhaps artefacts of the particular mathematical formalism that I have been adopting here for the description of the Dirac equation for the electron? This raises a more general question: what is the physical justification in allowing oneself to be carried along by the elegance of some mathematical description and then trying to regard that description as describing a ‘reality’? … 

So are these zigs and zags real? For my own part, I would say so; they are as real as the ‘Dirac electron’ is itself real — as a highly appropriate idealised mathematical description of one of the most fundamental ingredients of the universe. But is this real ‘reality’?

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, 'reality' is meaning construed of experience: the phenomena construed by language and their reconstrual as metaphenomena, the meanings of meanings that realise theory. In this view, the 'zig and zag' particles are real, as metaphenomena, but whether they are interpersonally assessed as valid is a separate matter.