One of the more overlooked voices arguing for an essentially wave understanding is Carver Mead;

http://worrydream.com/refs/Mead%20-%20American%20Spectator%20Interview.html

One thing to consider is how much do these models rely on cultural assumptions, particularly the Western, object oriented, atomistic view and if modern physics came out of an Eastern, contextually oriented paradigm, would it have the same problems. It does seem like there are some feedback issues that are seriously muddied.

Even the concept of time is different. In the West, we view ourselves as distinct entities, moving through our context, so it is this narrative progression, with the future in front and the past behind, which is the basis for treating time as one linear dimension. The Eastern view is that the past is in front and the future behind, because what is in front and the past are known, while what is behind and the future are unknown. Which better accords with the physical reality that we see events after they occur, then the energy transitions to other events and observers.

The evident reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

It is just that as these mobile organisms, our experience is a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so we sense time as the point of the present moving past to future, codified as measures of duration, but that is an effect. Yesterday doesn't cause today. The sun shining on a spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights.

Time is frequency, events are amplitude.