Penrose (2004: 1028):
Modern science would be cautious in attempting answers to ‘why?’ questions as well as ‘what?’. Yet, questions as to ‘what?’ and ‘why?’ are frequently supplied with answers. It is considered acceptable to do so provided that the questions are not asking about reality at its deepest levels. One may expect an answer to such a question as the following. ‘What is a cholesterol molecule made of?’; ‘why does a match burst into flame when dragged rapidly across a suitable rough surface?’; ‘what is an aurora?’; ‘why does the sun shine?’; ‘what are the forces which hold a hydrogen atom or a hydrogen molecule together?’; and ‘why is a uranium nucleus unstable?’. Yet, some other questions that one might pose could cause more embarrassment, such as ‘what is an electron?’ or ‘why does space have just three dimensions?’. These questions can, however, find meaning within some more fundamental picture of physical reality.
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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, an electron is just what physics says it is. For example:
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. The electron's mass is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton. Quantum mechanical properties of the electron include an intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of a half-integer value, expressed in units of the reduced Planck constant, ħ.
From this perspective, there are three dimensions of space because this number proved functional in the construal of experience as first-order meaning, and has since proved functional in reconstruals of first-order meaning as the second-order meaning of theory. String theorists are trying to demonstrate that what they think are additional spatial dimensions would be more functional in the second-order meaning of theory.
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