From Meaning to Matter, Part 2: Dialogue with Physics

In the first post, we saw how Systemic Functional Linguistics frames meaning in terms of potential and instance, and how clauses model relations between processes rather than static things. In this post, we explore how these insights resonate with the way modern physics describes reality.

In quantum theory and relativity, what we call “phenomena” are not fixed, independently given entities. Instead, their properties depend on perspective, measurement, and context — in other words, on relational processes. This mirrors the SFL distinction between systems (potential) and instantiation (actualised choice). Just as a clause instantiates one possibility from a system of choices, a physical event can be seen as a perspectival cut from a structured field of potential outcomes.

From this viewpoint, reality is a network of possibilities in continuous evolution. Quantum events, for example, are not predetermined “things” but actualisations from a spectrum of potentialities. Relativity, with its dependence on reference frames, further underscores the perspectival and relational nature of the world.

Applying SFL concepts here offers a conceptual bridge:

• System → structured potential in physics (all possible outcomes constrained by laws and relations)

• Instantiation → actualised event (the specific measurement, observation, or occurrence)

• Clause complex → relational network (interconnected processes that give rise to events)

This dialogue reveals that SFL is not merely a tool for analysing language. Its architecture naturally extends into physics, providing a lens to understand reality as relational, processual, and emergent from potential. By thinking in these terms, we begin to see that meaning and matter are two sides of the same underlying relational logic.

In the next post, we will formalise this perspective as a relational ontology, showing how the evolution of possibility becomes a unifying principle linking language, physics, and reality itself.