“…language users view the world in repeatable units but may choose to focus upon them as particles (discrete bits), waves (merging of units and overlapping borders that change over time), or fields (as points in a set of relationships). [Kenneth Pike] posited that each of these perspectives may and must come into play in a discourser's understanding of something and are not to be misunderstood as mutually exclusive. An exclusively particle view of the world may yield nothing but discreteness unconnected, decontextualized, randomized bits of experience; an exclusively wave view may yield nothing but unstable, ever-shifting strings and combinations of experience that resist articulation; an exclusively field perspective may yield nothing but a universe of relations that govern no substantive, tangible entities that bear identifiable features of their own.”
— Bruce Edwards, “The Reports of Its Death Are Greatly Exaggerated: Tagmemics and the Politics of Indifference”
How is a rock a particle? (discrete and static)
How is a rock a wave? (part of an ongoing process)
How is a rock a field? (part of an interconnected system)
Use any noun you like.