Article 4: On Frequency and Pattern

Framing

A tuning fork vibrates at a precise frequency. Strike it, and it produces a note—a specific sound, always the same tone, always the same pitch. Molecules of air move back and forth at a measurable rate. The motion is not random. It follows a pattern.

This is one of the oldest observations in physics: that form correlates with frequency. Pluck a violin string and change its length, and the frequency changes; the pitch changes. The shape of a sound wave determines what the sound is. The specific oscillation determines the specific phenomenon.

In recent centuries, we have discovered that this principle extends far beyond sound. Electromagnetic radiation is characterized by frequency. Different frequencies correspond to different forms of radiation: radio waves, visible light, X-rays. They are all the same phenomenon—oscillating electromagnetic fields—yet they appear completely different to us because they have different frequencies.

Different frequencies of visible light appear as different colors. Red light oscillates at a lower frequency than blue light. The difference in frequency determines what we perceive. The color is not in the light itself, in any obvious sense. It is a relational property—it emerges from the interaction between a specific frequency and the structure of human perception.

This suggests something worth examining: that form and frequency might be intimately connected. That what a thing is might be inseparable from how it vibrates. But what would such a connection mean? Does every pattern have a frequency underlying it? Does everything that appears, appear by virtue of a specific oscillation? And if so, what is vibrating?

I. The Case for Frequency as Descriptive

In modern physics, the universe is described in terms of fields and waves. Matter is not fundamental. It is an excitation in a field—a particular configuration of energy, localized in space and time. An electron is not a tiny solid ball. It is a pattern in the electron field. A photon is not a particle traveling through space. It is a quantum of electromagnetic radiation—a disturbance in the electromagnetic field.

And fields themselves are characterized by their frequencies. Each type of field oscillates at certain possible frequencies. When a field oscillates at one frequency, we perceive one kind of phenomenon. When it oscillates at another, we perceive something entirely different.

This is not metaphorical. This is how physics describes the observed world. Form and frequency are intimately linked in the equations that account for what we perceive.

If this description is accurate—and the technologies that depend on it suggest it has significant predictive power—then we might think of all form as expressible in terms of frequency. Everything that appears as pattern, as structure, as coherent form, might be describable as some kind of oscillation.

The human body is largely water. Water molecules are in constant motion, oscillating, vibrating at various frequencies. Proteins fold into specific shapes. These shapes are not static. They vibrate. The vibrations are necessary to their function. If a protein were to become completely still, completely rigid, it would cease to function. The frequency is essential to the form.

Nerve impulses propagate along neurons at a certain speed, with a certain rhythm. Brain activity involves oscillations at different frequencies. Delta waves during sleep, theta waves during meditation, gamma waves during intense cognitive activity. Each frequency pattern corresponds to a different measurable state.

The observation that frequency patterns correlate with states of consciousness is not mysterious. It is simply a description of what can be measured. But it raises questions worth holding open: if the frequency changes, does the state change? If the oscillation shifts, does the consciousness become something different? And in what direction does causality flow—do frequency changes cause state changes, or do state changes produce frequency changes, or is the distinction itself confused?

What becomes available to think if we describe phenomena in terms of frequency? And what becomes unavailable, pushed to the background or made invisible, by adopting this descriptive framework?

II. Pattern as Compression of Information

A pattern is a regularity. It is something that repeats, that returns, that can be predicted. If you have seen the beginning of a pattern, you can anticipate the rest. A pattern compresses information. Instead of having to remember every detail of every instance, you can remember a rule.

Patterns reduce complexity. This is their utility. A DNA sequence is a pattern—a sequence of nucleotides following a rule. That rule contains the information for building an entire organism. The actual form of the organism is vastly more complex than the DNA sequence, but the sequence contains the essential information. It is a compressed representation.

Sound waves are patterns in air pressure. A complex musical composition contains multiple patterns—recurring melodies, rhythmic structures, harmonic progressions. The brain recognizes these patterns. That recognition is what makes the music coherent, what allows it to be experienced as a single piece rather than as chaos.

If everything we perceive as form is a pattern, then perhaps everything we perceive is a kind of compression. The apple we perceive is a much simpler thing than the quantum mechanical reality that constitutes the apple. We perceive the apple because our brains have extracted a simple pattern from the chaos of sensory data.

But patterns do not float free. A pattern has to be instantiated in something. There have to be oscillations actually occurring in some medium for the pattern to exist. The pattern of a melody exists in the actual vibrations of air molecules. The pattern of DNA exists in actual chemical bonds between actual molecules.

What medium would host the patterns we perceive? What is actually oscillating when we perceive the apple?

One possibility: the electromagnetic field. Everything visible is visible because light reflects off it. That light is an oscillating electromagnetic field at specific frequencies. What we see when we look at the apple is not the apple itself, but the pattern of electromagnetic radiation that the apple reflects and absorbs.

The apple's "form" then—the shape, color, texture that we perceive—is actually a pattern in the electromagnetic field. The form is not in the apple. It is in the light. The apple merely guides how the light oscillates. The apple is, in a sense, a filter. It modulates the frequencies that pass through it.

But this still does not answer what the apple is apart from how it appears. When we close our eyes, does the apple cease to have form? Does it become something else—just a configuration of atoms with no visual appearance?

The question may be confused. We are asking what the apple is in itself, apart from how it appears to any perceiver. But perhaps the apple in itself is not a "what" at all. Perhaps the apple is simply what it does—the way it affects other things, the way it transforms radiation, the ways it appears to different forms of consciousness.

III. The Relationship Between Form and Appearance

An object has a form. We can measure its shape. We can describe its geometry. Yet the same form appears differently depending on the angle from which we view it. The same apple appears different to the eye, the infrared camera, the ultrasound scanner.

These are not different apples. They are different appearances of the same form. But what is the "same form" that underlies these different appearances?

In one sense, the form is the abstract shape—the mathematical description of the object's spatial extent and structure. But this abstract shape has no appearance on its own. It has no color, no texture, no sensory quality. It is only when this abstract shape enters into relation with a perceiving system that it acquires appearance.

The appearance depends on the relationship between the form and the perceiving system. Light bounces off the apple and enters the eye. The eye has a specific structure that determines what wavelengths it can detect. The brain processes the signal and constructs an image. The same form, processed through a different kind of sensory system, would produce a completely different appearance.

So there is the form itself—whatever that is. And there is the appearance—how the form manifests in relation to a perceiver. And between them lies the frequency.

The frequency is what mediates between form and appearance. The form of the apple determines what frequencies of light it will reflect. The human eye is sensitive to only certain frequencies of light. The frequencies that the apple reflects match, roughly, the frequencies the eye can detect. This is why the apple appears to us in visible light.

A bat, which perceives ultrasound, does not perceive the apple visually. The apple's form does not reflect ultrasound in any meaningful way, or the bat's hearing is not attuned to the specific frequencies the apple would reflect. So the apple appears differently to the bat.

The frequency is the bridge. It is the specific oscillation that connects the form to the appearance. Change the frequency, and the appearance changes, even though the form remains the same.

But this raises a puzzle: if the frequency determines the appearance, and different frequencies produce different appearances, then what is the form itself apart from any particular frequency? Is the form something that exists independent of all frequency? Or is it merely a placeholder—a concept we use to refer to the constant underlying the various appearances?

Perhaps the form itself is not independent of frequency. Perhaps the form IS the particular way that the thing relates to frequency. The apple is not a thing that happens to reflect certain frequencies. The apple is the pattern of its relationship to frequency.

This would mean that the apple has no appearance apart from a perceiver. It would mean that asking what the apple is in itself is a confused question. The apple is always already in relation. It is what it is to particular forms of consciousness.

IV. On Harmony and Resonance

When two oscillators have frequencies that are related by simple ratios, they resonate with each other. A tuning fork will cause another tuning fork at the same frequency to vibrate, even if they are not in contact. The sound waves from the first fork push the air, and the second fork responds. The frequency is the same, so the fork naturally enters into oscillation.

When the frequencies are not related by simple ratios, the interaction is less clean. The second fork may respond to a very weak degree, but there is no resonance. The oscillations do not amplify each other.

This principle applies far beyond sound. Atoms have natural frequencies at which they oscillate. When electromagnetic radiation of the right frequency hits an atom, the radiation is absorbed and the atom is excited to a higher energy state. When the frequency is wrong, the radiation passes through with little interaction.

This suggests that compatibility between frequencies is not arbitrary. Some frequencies mesh with each other; others do not. The relationship between frequencies creates patterns of harmony and discord.

In music, we hear this directly. Two notes that are an octave apart sound harmonious. The frequency ratio is 2:1. The waves line up in a regular pattern. Two notes that are a half-step apart create a dissonant sound—the waves interfere with each other, creating beats and roughness.

But harmony and dissonance are not purely physical. They are also perceptual. Different cultures have different ideas about what sounds consonant. The human ear has been shaped by evolution and by culture. We find certain frequency ratios pleasant and others disagreeable.

Yet there is something that seems to transcend culture. The octave—a 2:1 frequency ratio—is recognized as consonant in nearly all musical traditions. The fifth—a 3:2 ratio—is similarly near-universal. These simple ratios produce a kind of perfection of alignment that the human ear finds pleasing.

This suggests that there is something in the structure of human hearing that naturally resonates with simple frequency ratios. It is not arbitrary. It is rooted in how our ears and brains are constructed.

If this is true for sound, might it not be true for other domains as well? Might there be frequencies at which human consciousness naturally resonates? Might certain patterns of activity in the brain—certain frequency profiles—align more naturally with consciousness itself?

And if so, might it be possible to change the frequency at which a phenomenon operates and thereby change its fundamental character? If an apple's "form" is rooted in a particular pattern of frequencies, and if that pattern could be changed, would the apple become something else?

This is not magic. At the quantum level, changing the energy state of an atom changes its frequencies. Give an electron enough energy to jump to a higher orbital, and you have changed the frequency at which it oscillates. The atom is now in a different state.

But changing the frequencies of some of an apple's atoms would not change the whole apple into something else. The apple is a macroscopic object composed of vastly more atoms than we could manipulate. And the macroscopic form of the apple is determined by chemical and physical bonds—relationships between atoms—rather than by the frequencies of individual atoms.

Still, the principle holds at some level. What something is depends on the pattern of frequencies at which its parts oscillate. Change the pattern significantly, and you change what it is.

V. The Uncertainty of What Vibrates

We have been assuming that "frequency" refers to oscillations in something—in a medium, in a field, in the atoms or molecules of a thing. But what is the underlying medium that vibrates?

For sound, it is clear: air molecules oscillate. For electromagnetic radiation, it is the electromagnetic field. But for more abstract phenomena—for thoughts, for meanings, for the patterns that constitute a living organism—what is vibrating?

When a neuron fires, electrical potentials propagate along the axon. This is a literal wave, a literal oscillation. But is the neuron's oscillation the thought, or is it merely the physical correlate of the thought? Does the thought itself vibrate, or only the brain?

Or consider a more basic question: what is oscillating in a quantum field?

In quantum field theory, a field is defined as a set of oscillators at every point in space. But what is doing the oscillating? There is no medium underlying the field. The field is not made of anything. It is not waves in something. It is defined abstractly as a set of values at each point in spacetime, evolving according to an equation.

When we say the field oscillates, we are describing how those values change over time. But the oscillation is not a physical vibration of anything. It is an abstract mathematical pattern.

This suggests that "frequency" might be a more abstract concept than we usually think. It is not necessarily a physical vibration of anything. It is a kind of pattern, a kind of periodicity, a regular return of states.

If this is true, then we might extend the concept of frequency far beyond physics. We might say that any pattern that repeats, any structure that exhibits periodicity, has a frequency in a generalized sense.

A melody has a frequency structure—not because the notes oscillate, but because certain musical intervals repeat, creating a sense of pattern and return. A story has a frequency structure—a rhythm of tension and release, of complication and resolution.

A living organism has a frequency structure. The organism is not made of an underlying medium in the way that sound waves are made of air. But the organism exhibits rhythms and patterns: the rhythm of the heartbeat, the cycle of sleep and waking, the pattern of seasons and growth and decay.

If we think of frequency in this abstract sense—as any regular, repeating pattern—then everything has a frequency. Everything exhibits some kind of rhythm or periodicity.

But then the concept of frequency becomes so general that it risks becoming meaningless. If frequency is just any pattern, then saying "everything has a frequency" says very little.

Yet perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the insight is not that frequency is a universal property of things, but that we can describe anything in terms of patterns and rhythms. And patterns and rhythms are not properties of the things themselves. They are ways of organizing perception and thought about things.

The frequency is not in the apple. It is in how we perceive the apple, in how we structure our understanding of what the apple is.

Closing: Patterns Within Patterns

Frequency and pattern point to a view of reality in which nothing stands alone. Everything is a vibration, an oscillation, a repetition within a larger context.

But which frequencies matter? At what scale do we look for pattern? An apple is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of particles, which are, in quantum mechanics, not particles at all but probability waves, excitations in fields.

At each scale, there are patterns and frequencies. The pattern at one scale is composed of patterns at a smaller scale. The pattern at one scale gives rise to patterns at a larger scale.

There is no bottom level where the pattern ends and we find something purely fundamental. There is no top level where all patterns are unified into a single whole.

What we find, looking in any direction, is more pattern, further frequency, deeper structure.

The question that remains open is whether this infinity of patterns means anything. Whether the fact that everything exhibits frequency and pattern tells us something true about reality, or whether it is merely a way of describing reality that we have invented.

Is frequency fundamental, or is it simply the way our perceptual and conceptual systems carve up reality?

And does this distinction—between something being fundamental and being a useful description—ultimately matter?