A Rational Cosmology: Waves as Ontological Relationships

Essay XXXIX

This is Essay XXXIX of Mr. Stolyarov's series, "A Rational Cosmology," which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in "A Rational Cosmology" here.

Current empiricist-positivist "science" often sports the grave ontological error of claiming that "all entities are in some degree particles and in some degree waves." Of course, in order for this statement to hold any ethos, both the speaker's and the listener's idea of what a wave is must be quite vague indeed, and certainly not examined with any extent of philosophical rigor.

It shall be apparent from the present treatise that, while a particle is indeed an entity, a wave is a relationship, and an entity cannot be a relationship in itself, and, though waves are many times observed to emanate from particles, they cannot ever be particles in themselves, nor achieve an existence independent from the entities that happen to emit them.

The broadest definition of a wave, which applies to the tides of the ocean and electromagnetic vibrations alike, is that of a periodic disturbance. This immediately begs the question: a disturbance -- of what?

A disturbance is by definition an action of some sort. Since only entities can be acted upon, a wave must be a disturbance of entities, be those entities water molecules, air molecules, or coils of a spring when the spring is rotated to bring about the occurrence of sine-like curves along its length.

Moreover, since only entities can act, waves can only be produced by entities. Waves are thus the action of certain entities to invoke a periodic disturbance within other entities. A loudspeaker may, for example, act to invoke a periodic disturbance in the air molecules of its vicinity, or a stream of air particles (known as "wind") may act to invoke a periodic disturbance in a large body of water molecules.