Sunday 2 April 2017

The Thoughts Of Eddington Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1990: 161-2):
"The discovery [of the nucleus] does not go beyond the waves which represent the knowledge we have of the nucleus," says Eddington [in The Philosophy Of Physical Science], for nobody has ever seen an atomic nucleus.  All we see are the results of experiments, which we interpret in terms of the nucleus.

Blogger Comment:

This is consistent with the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory to the extent that the 'knowledge we have of the nucleus' is the meaning 'nucleus' that we construe of experience in experiments.  The 'waves which represent' such knowledge are construals of experience as potential (probability) rather than instance (frequency).

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