Tuesday 31 October 2017

Quantum Uncertainty Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [6]

Gribbin (1989: 378):
If there really was a moment of creation, then the concept of quantum uncertainty, one of the strangest and most fundamental features of quantum physics, seems to provide the best hope of explaining how the Universe came into being.  In that case, there may indeed have been a moment of creation marking the boundary of the Universe at the beginning of time.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, quantum uncertainty is the construal of experience as quantum probability, which is the quantification of physical systems as potential.

As interpersonal meaning, probability is an assessment of a proposition as 'either yes or no', that is 'maybe yes, maybe no' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 177, 691).

Construing the coming into being of the Universe is construing a first instantiation of physical potential.

Sunday 29 October 2017

The Universe As A Quantum Fluctuation Of 'Nothing' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 375-6):
Ed Tryon himself revived his idea in the context of inflation in the 1980s, and in 1982 it was also taken up by Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University.  Vilenkin, indeed, takes things a step further than Tryon did in 1973.  Tryon talked about a "vacuum fluctuation," implying that some form of space-time metric existed before the Universe came into being; but Vilenkin is trying to develop a model in which space, time and matter are all created out of literally nothing at all, as a quantum fluctuation of nothing.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the idea of the space, time and matter being "created out of literally nothing at all" is also the idea of the material order of experience as an instance of material order potential.  The inclusion of space-time in Vilenkin's model is the inclusion of the spatiotemporal location and extent of processes and their participants in the instances of material order potential.

Friday 27 October 2017

The Universe As Vacuum Fluctuation Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 372):
But one of the most dramatic implications of the idea of inflation in its 1985 form is that the whole Universe may have appeared literally out of nothing at all, created as a quantum fluctuation in the same way that quantum uncertainty allows a virtual pair of particles to appear and exist for a short time before annihilating.
The idea surfaced in Nature in December 1973, in the form of a scientific paper from Edward Tryon of Hunter College, City University of New York.  Tryon proposed what he called "the simplest and most appealing" Big Bang model imaginable, that "our Universe is a fluctuation of the vacuum."

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the idea of the whole Universe "appearing literally out of nothing at all" is the idea of the material order of experience as an instance of material order potential.

Wednesday 25 October 2017

The Statistical Mechanics Of Boltzmann Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 368):
It was Boltzmann who showed that entropy (a concept introduced by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius in 1865) is a measure of the disorder of a system.  Boltzmann's approach was statistical.  The behaviour of a gas could be explained, he found, by the random motions of very many molecules colliding with each other and with the walls of any container in which the gas was confined.  The rules that describe such a system of many particles interacting at random are very accurate and reliable — they start out from simple probability calculations (like the chance of rolling two sixes on a pair of dice three times in a row) and give you the odds of certain possibilities occurring for the system of molecules that make up the gas, and they tell you what the most probable state for such a system is.  The set of equations developed by Boltzmann and later refined by others is called statistical mechanics.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Boltzmann's probability calculations quantify physical systems as potential, and the statistical behaviours of interacting particles are quantified instances of that potential.

Monday 23 October 2017

The Laws Of Physics Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1989: 348):
This is hardly likely to be a chance occurrence and must mean that the laws of physics somehow require the Universe to be born out of the Big Bang in a state of extreme flatness.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this:
  1. confuses meaning of the first-order (the Universe) with meaning of the second-order (laws of physics);
  2. by the word 'require', misconstrues the laws of physics as modulation (obligation/inclination) instead of modalisation (probability/usuality); and
  3. proposes that the second-order (theory) requires something of the first-order (data), which is equivalent to proposing that a map requires something of the landscape it models.


modulation: obligation
modalisation: probability
2nd-order meaning
theory
'map'

Laws of Physics
according to SFL
1st-order meaning
data
'landscape'
Laws of Physics
according to Gribbin

Saturday 21 October 2017

The Laws Of Physics Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Gribbin (1989: 344):
We owe our existence to a very tiny imbalance in the laws of physics, a preference for matter over antimatter in the decay of X bosons that amounts to no more than one extra quark for every billion antiquarks — an imbalance equivalent to one ten millionth of one percent of all the matter that existed in the form of X and anti-X pairs in the GUT [Grand Unified Theory] era [of the early universe].

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this confuses first-order meanings (physical data) with second-order meanings (the laws of physics).  This is equivalent to mistaking a map (laws) for the landscape (data) it models, and is a widespread epistemological error in the field of physics.

Thursday 19 October 2017

Quantum Reality Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 324):
If only our minds were equipped to handle the same concepts in a more abstract form, in keeping with the quantum equations, so that we could properly understand the nature of quantum reality, where nothing is real unless it is observed, and there is no way of telling what "particles" are doing except at the moments when they interact with one another, then supersymmetry would seem much more natural.  The flaw lies in our imagination rather than in the theory.

Blogger Comments:

The "flaw" here lies in the interpretation of the theory, which results from not questioning the epistemological assumptions of Galileo and Descartes on which classical physics is based, and which quantum physics disconfirms.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, it is not that "nothing is real unless it is observed" but that 'real' is a construal of experience as meaning, and without observation, there is neither experience nor its construal as meaning.

Tuesday 17 October 2017

Virtual Particles Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 245-6):
The laws of quantum physics allow such a pair of particles [an electron–positron pair] to pop into existence out of the vacuum for a very, very tiny split second of time (Planck's constant divided by 1 MeV) and then to annihilate one another and disappear again. Such particle pairs are called "virtual" particles. Each pair can exist only for a very short time, but the vacuum is seething with such pairs, constantly being produced, disappearing, and being replaced by new pairs. At least that is what quantum physics says the vacuum is like. And the existence of virtual particles has a direct effect on the equations of particle physics. Without virtual particles, the equations do not predict correctly the interactions between charged particles. With effects due to virtual particles included, they do.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, virtual particles are hypothesised instances of quantum potential — their frequencies being instances of quantum probability.

Sunday 15 October 2017

The Notion Of Phenomena "Obeying" Physical Rules Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 244):
[Fermions] obey a set of statistical rules known as Fermi-Dirac statistics.  [Bosons] obey a different set of rules called Bose-Einstein statistics;

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, these rules are statements of probability (modalisation), not commands of obligation (modulation), and the notion of (material) particles "obeying" a (semiotic) model of them has the same epistemological status as a (material) landscape "obeying" a (semiotic) topographical map.  This interpersonal metaphor pervades physics and leads to serious epistemological confusions. 

Friday 13 October 2017

Wave-Particle Duality Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [5]

Gribbin (1989: 243-4):
For many purposes, and especially for teaching undergraduate physics, physicists do indeed treat electrons as "real" particles, and the waves associated with them as "probability waves," which can interfere with one another, be diffracted through small holes, and do all the other tricks waves can do.  "It is the probability which has the wave-like behaviour," Davies [1984] tells his students in that book, "while the particles themselves remain as little lumps, albeit elusively secreted in the wave which guides their progress … which facet of this wave-particle duality is manifested depends on the sort of question being asked."  This is bad teaching.


Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the "interference" of probability waves is the ensemble of interdependent potentials of the quantum system.  Waves do not pass through the slits, particles do.  Particles are the instances of the quantum system potential, and the scatter of particle frequencies "instantiates" the probabilities that quantify the potential.

Wednesday 11 October 2017

Wave-Particle Duality Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [4]

Gribbin (1989: 243):
"Resist at all costs," [Paul Davies] says in [Quantum Mechanics, 1984], "the temptation to think of an electron as pulled asunder and smeared out in space in little ripples.  The electron itself is not a wave.  Rather, the way it moves about is controlled by wave-like principles.  Physicists still regard the electron as a point-like entity, but the precise location of that point may not be well-defined."  And he goes on to describe the probability waves that determine where an electron is likely to be…

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, wave-like principles "control" an electron in the sense that 'wave-like principles" model the probabilistic potential of which each electron is an instance.

Monday 9 October 2017

The Copenhagen Interpretation Of The Double-Slit Experiment Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1989: 242):
In an experiment where an electron goes from point A to point B via an intervening screen that has two holes in it, quantum theory says that unless we watch all the time we cannot possibly tell which holes it went through — indeed, that it is meaningless to say it went either way.  Its "real" trajectory is given by the sum of the two possible paths.  But classical theory says there is a definite path and it must have gone through just one of the holes, even if we weren't looking.  When we look to see which hole the electron goes through, of course, that particular uncertainty vanishes and we have a different experiment in which we know which path the particle took.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the reason we cannot tell which hole an electron went through unless we watch it going through one of them is because an electron going through a hole is a construal of experience as meaning.  For any interval that we are not watching, there is no construal of experience as meaning.

The "sum of the two possible paths", on the other hand, is a construal of experience as quantum system potential.  When we look, we construe one instance of that potential.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of the double-slit experiment is not strange, and does not contradict common sense, if the distinction is made between experience and meaning, and within meaning, between potential and instance.

Saturday 7 October 2017

Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [9]

Gribbin (1989: 242):
What Everett found was that the equations could be interpreted, with complete validity, as implying that every time the Universe is faced with a "choice" at the quantum level it splits into two, and both options are chosen. … But, says Everett (or rather, say the equations), for every observer who looks and sees the electron go through one hole, there is another observer — in another world — who looks and sees it go the other way.  Both are equally real.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Everett's 'many worlds' interpretation confuses the system of potential (possible options) with its instances ("chosen" options), and misconstrues the alternative ('or') relation between options as an additive ('and') relation.

Thursday 5 October 2017

Feynman's Path Integral Technique Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 241-2):
Feynman tells us that in the two–slit experiment we not only have to think of the electron going through both holes at once, but also as taking every possible path through both holes at once.  The conventional quantum view has it that there is no trajectory; from Feynman's point of view, we have to take account of every trajectory.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Feynman's taking into account of every possible trajectory is the construing of experience as quantum system potential.

It is not true that one electron goes through both holes at once, since a singly fired electron is detected as having passed through one hole or the other.  The statistical distribution of multiple electrons is in line with the overall probabilities of the potential of the quantum system.

It is not true that there is no trajectory, but that, without observation, there is no construal of the experience as an instance of meaning, as a trajectory.

Tuesday 3 October 2017

Classical vs Quantum Mechanics Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 239):
In the classical view, a particle at point A has a definite speed in a definite direction.  As it is acted upon by external forces, it moves along a precise determinable path, which, for the sake of argument, passes through, or ends at, point B.  The quantum–mechanical view is different.  We cannot know, not even in principle, both the position and momentum of a particle simultaneously.  There is an inherent uncertainty about where a particle is going, and if the particle starts out at point A and is later detected at point B, we cannot know exactly how it got from A to B unless it is watched all the way along its path.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the difference between classical and quantum mechanics is that the latter — unwittingly — introduces the distinction between potential (quantified as probabilities) and instances (quantified as frequencies).

Sunday 1 October 2017

Quantum Uncertainty Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [5]

Gribbin (1989: 238):
Every time subatomic particles are involved in interactions, the outcome depends on chance.  The odds may be very heavily stacked in favour of one particular outcome, or they may be no better than tossing a coin on a 50:50 basis.  But they are clearly and precisely laid down by the laws of quantum physics, and there is no such thing as certainty in the quantum world.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the chance on which the outcomes of particle interactions depend is the probability that quantifies the quantum system as potential.

By the same token, the laws of quantum physics are themselves statements of probability (modalisation), not obligation (modulation).