One possible criticism of formal syntactic theory is that it is based on a philosophy and a set of metaphors which appear superseded even in the physical sciences where they were developed. Borrowing again from the physical sciences, this paper argues for linguistic theory with a philosophical basis in interrelatedness. The Dance of Shiva is adopted as a relevant and explanatory metaphor, and clause-relational analysis is identified as an approach which is contributing to linguistic theory in ways which are significant for applied linguistics.