What is a wave?

Jordan Bell
November 14, 2014

What is a wave? Is a wave a “thing”, or is it merely a way of speaking about pieces of stuff changing in a certain way in time? This is related to William of Ockham’s ideas about motion, that “motion” does not deserve to be thought about as a thing but merely as a convenient way of discussing the position of things at different points in time. The following are some references I assembled about waves.

Lamb [24, p. 369, §236]

Preston [33, p. 412, §289]

Basset [2, p. 163, §405]

Whewell [49, Book IV]

Whewell [50, Book VIII]

Russo [37, p. 229]

Crombie [9, p. 126]

Philoponus [29, p. 149]

De anima [17, §447]

Einstein and Infeld [16, p. 100]

Vitruvius [21, p. 11]

Thagard [45, p. 39]

Thorndike [46, p. 32]

Pretor-Pinney [34, pp. 35, 81, 161, 269]

Truesdell [48, p. 71] and [47, pp. CXXI–CXXIII]

Clagett [7, p. 74]

Hofstadter and Sander [20, p. 209],

Sambursky [40, pp. 138–141] and [41, pp. 89, 100–104] and [39, p. 22–29]

Needham [28, pp. 8-10]

Beare [3, pp. 93–95]

Hankinson [19, p. 240]

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