oscillation

English translation: a pun on the different meanings of "see"

14:24 Jan 28, 2019

English language (monolingual) [PRO]
Science - Poetry & Literature / a pun on words

English term or phrase: oscillation

Hi,
I’m a bit lost: I don’t quite understand what the pun is in the following passage…(by the way, the author himself says he is not good at puns!!).
I thought that maybe the pun is on the term “oscillation”, which seems to be used to refer at first to the oscillating movement of waves and then to the “oscillation between states” (wave and particle) of light...

I don’t know whether it may be useful to understand the pun, but I’ll try to provide some general context and to describe what the author means with “looping”. The author is trying to explain the origin of awareness. According to him, awareness arises from a “plane of possibility”, a concept akin to the concept of quantum vacuum, from which a series of possibilities becomes actualized as plateaus and peaks, plateaus and peaks representing intentions, motivation, and singular thoughts, emotions respectively. Our awareness of a thought depends on the presence of a “loop” which connects this plane of possibility (the origin of awareness) to the thought. And this “loop” is compared to a 40hz sweep connecting various brain areas, which is thought to be the neural mechanism underlying awareness, according to Tononi and colleagues; the “looping” is also compared to another theory, that of “connectome harmonics”.

Thank you very much for your patience!

************

How can we be aware and also aware of something if that something is a probability position above the plane of possibility, but the awareness itself arises from the plane? Drawing on neuroscience findings regarding oscillation, we can see the commonality of such looping in brain terms in the 40-Hz sweep and in the connectome harmonics. A similar oscillation can be seen in the physics notion of fields of energy in which we can see, for example *** (and no pun intended) ***, that light has a waveform in its probability distribution as a spectrum of values. When light is a wave, its spectrum is present. When photons appear as particles, a singular value has been manifest from a range of possibilities. Light can be both a particular value—a particle—and a range of values, a wave.

haribert KudoZ activity Questions: 289 (none open) (1 without valid answers) (1 closed without grading) Answers: 524
Local time: 21:55

Selected answer:a pun on the different meanings of "see"

Explanation:
To me, the "pun" seems more likely to be on the word "see" talking about the property of light. Editing the phrase a little to emphasise the way it sounds to me: "we can see (no pun intended) that light has a waveform in its probability distribution..."

The pun seems to be a pun on the word "see" in the sense of recognising that the concept of light as a waveform is used in physics, and the more literal sense of seeing light (as in detecting a visual stimulus).

Selected response from:

John Druce
Spain
Local time: 21:55

Grading comment

Dear colleagues,
by no means am I sure about what the pun actually is. However, “see the light” might possibly seem to be more similar to a pun...
I wish to thank you all - John, Piyush and Yvonne – for your precious help and patience!

4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED

like a waveform

Yvonne Gallagher

a pun on the different meanings of "see"

John Druce

Discussion entries: 2

Answers

22 mins confidence:

like a waveform

Explanation:
You're right. The pun (NO PUN INTENDED) such as it is, is to do with oscillation and waveforms

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Physics_Study_Guide/Waves

...A wave is said to oscillate, which means to move back and forth in a regular, repeating way. This fluctuation can be between extremes of position, force, or quantity. Different types of waves have different types of oscillations. Longitudinal waves: Oscillation is parallel to the direction of the wave...

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sound_Synthesis_Theory/Oscilla...
...An oscillator is a repeating waveform with a fundamental frequency and peak amplitude and it forms the basis of most popular synthesis techniques today. Aside from the frequency or pitch of the oscillator and its amplitude, one of the most important features is the shape of its waveform...

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10340
...In this new frequency-specific representation of cortical activity, that we call ‘connectome harmonics’, oscillatory networks of the human brain at rest match harmonic wave patterns of certain frequencies...

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Note added at 38 mins (2019-01-28 15:03:23 GMT)
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No. The best puns are meant to be funny and clever wordplays. This is neither clever nor funny so I really wouldn't worry about it or even spend a lot of time trying to replicate it necessarily. People say "no pun intended" both for puns that they DO intend (and which they think are clever and/or amusing) and for those puns that just happen, like here, where oscillation can also be a type of wave form! So, no real wordplay taking place here.

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Note added at 1 hr (2019-01-28 15:28:12 GMT)
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No worries:-)

Yvonne Gallagher
Ireland
Local time: 20:55
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 317

Notes to answerer

Asker: Thank you so much, Yvonne, for your explanation! May I ask; do you feel it is a real "pun"?

Asker: Thank you for your so kind reply: although I'm not mothertongue, it didn't really seem a pun to me either!!

6 hrs confidence:

see that light has...

a pun on the different meanings of "see"

John Druce
Spain
Local time: 21:55
Native speaker of: English
PRO pts in category: 4

Grading comment

Notes to answerer

Asker: Hi, John, thank you very much for your contribution! At first, I also thought that the pun was on "see", but then, it seemed to be that it was more likely to be on "oscillation", in the double meaning of "waveform" but also "oscillating" between states., of "changing from one state to another".. I'm not completely sure, but one thing is sure however: the author is right when he says that he is not very good at puns!!

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