If matter is everything, our universe is made of particles as a house is made of bricks, but by accident not design, so physics tried to smash matter apart in accelerators to find fundamental particles that aren’t made of other particles.
Yet the term particle has implications. For example, chess pieces are like particles as they just sit there until they are moved, but ants put on a chess board crawl about themselves, so they are better described as entities. In general, particles move only when pushed while entities move themselves.
Is our universe then made of particles that move when pushed or entities that move themselves? A case can be made for the latter, as light always moves, as do electrons, and so do neutrinos that whizz about everywhere unseen. Photons, electrons, and neutrinos are all fundamental, so this suggests a world of active entities rather than passive particles.
Particles go where they are put, as chess pieces do, but where a photon hits a screen isn’t defined only by the forces acting on it. It actually chooses where it strikes from the possibilities. Calling this random doesn’t disguise that the photon itself decides where it goes, as do electrons and neutrinos, so again they are like active entities not passive particles.
Yet if fundamental particles move themselves and choose where they go, how was the universe built from them as a house is from bricks? The alternative now explored is that our universe wasn’t built but evolved, based on its own nature. If one photon led to the stars and galaxies we see, our universe is more like a seed that grew than a house that was built. What then defined the nature of that seed?