ABSTRACT
The question I am asking in this chapter is: how does the language of science reconstrue human experience? By how I mean both ‘in what respects’ and ‘by what means’. By the language of science I mean the various forms of discourse in which the activities of ‘doing science’ are carried out-but seen as a systemic resource for creating meaning, not as a collection of instances of text. By reconstrue I mean ‘reconstruct semiotically’: that is, replace one semiotic construction by another. I leave open the possibility that, in the end, the question might be dismissed-we might conclude that no such reconstrual takes place; although I have expressly formulated the question so as to suggest that I think it does.
