On Waves

Here's a fabulous picture from Coyote Buttes North, Arizona. Isn't it glorious!

I chose this image because it is a paradox: a solid that evokes a liquid. Clearly it was formed over many years of erosion caused by some body of water--a river or a lake or an ocean. But the essence of the water's flow--its grace--is captured in solid rock. (I love the Southwest!)

Is it obvious why waves in different forms seem to comprise so much of nature? And I'm not just talking about waves in the physical world. Consider the rise and fall of market prices, the waxing and waning of populations of fish and animals, and, most mysteriously of all, quantum probability waves in matter.

This quantum manifestation of waves is the sort of paradox that this picture illustrates--the ephemeral behaviour of a liquid manifest in a stolid solid. Isn't it strange? Counterintuitive to the nth degree.

Wave forms pervade the universe. From the monumental pulse of the cataclysmic creation of the universe to the waves on the Jersey shore; from the 11-year period--peak to trough--it takes the sun to reverse its magnetic field to the harmonics of my friend Don's cello; from the music of the spheres that Pythagoras could hear in the perfection of the heavens to my dog Sophie--a pup, an alpha female, an old dog, and someday, a memory. ('Another hundred Cockers just got off of the train and they're looking at us. And another hundred ...')

Is it completely ridiculous to consider these mysteries and ask 'Why?'