Alas, the trouble is that it's tremendously hard to learn (or teach!) the qualitative ideas without also learning the equations. (The only counterexample to that I've ever seen in physics is Feynman's amazing little book "QED", which isn't at all what you need here.) So I've got nothin' for ya. (And while I do enjoy conversations about this sort of thing, obviously, I can't possibly sustain one with my job these days: I'm already going to regret the time I've spent on this one. But it was fun.)