Slide 50: Material Perspective: Sensing As Creative Happening

If we use the generalised ‘ergative’ model to map mental processes onto material processes, we see that sensing is a creative happening, in which the Senser is Actor and the (emanating) Phenomenon is the Scope.

Now, as Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 184) point out, in a ‘creative’ happening, the outcome is the coming into existence of the Actor.  So, in viewing sensing as a creative happening, the outcome of sensing is the coming into existence of the Senser — a conscious being.

The Scope, on the other hand, either construes the domain over which the process takes place or the process itself, with no sharp line between them (op cit: 192).  So, in viewing sensing as a creative happening, the (emanating) Phenomenon is construed as the domain over which the sensing process takes place (or as the sensing process itself).