Pauling's Hybrid Atomic Orbitals Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1988: 128):

Electrons in the spherical, s, orbital ought to behave differently from those in the perpendicular, p, orbitals.  But an atom like carbon forms four identical bonds.  Each of these is a hybrid, flavoured one part of s and three parts of p.  Such behaviour is only possible because electrons behave as waves, not particles, in these interactions.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the one spherical and three perpendicular orbitals constitute the interrelated potential locations of electrons in relation to the nucleus of a carbon atom.  It is because they constitute the potential of the atom as a whole that they apply equally to all four chemical bonds, yielding the "hybrid" potentials for each of them.

From this perspective, electrons do not "behave as waves".  The wave is a model of quantum potential (i.e. potential behaviour), whereas the particle is a model of instances of that potential (i.e. actual behaviour).