According to materialism, matter is everything, so if particles are bits of matter, everything is made of particles. The universe could then have come from particles as a house is built from bricks, but by accident rather than design. Such ideas led to the search for fundamental particles, defined as those that aren’t made of other particles, by smashing matter apart in huge accelerators.
Yet the term particle implies certain features. For example, chess board pieces are like particles because they just sit there, until something moves them. In contrast, ants placed on a chess board move about by themselves, so they aren’t called particles. In general, particles move only when pushed by an external force, so ants on a chess board are better described as entities rather than particles.
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 that they all constantly move suggests a world based on active entities rather than passive particles.
Particles also move where they are put, as chess pieces do, but in quantum theory, where a photon hits a screen isn’t defined by the forces around it. To call it random doesn’t disguise the fact that the photon decides where it goes, given the possibilities. Electrons and neutrinos do the same, so again they are more like active entities than passive particles.
But if the fundamental particles of our universe move themselves, and choose where they go, how could it be built as a house is from bricks? The alternative now explored is that our universe wasn’t built, but rather built itself, based on its own nature, and not by accident. If our universe began as one photon that then evolved into the matter we see, it was more like a seed with the potential to become a tree than a house that was built.
The question then is, did our universe of stars and galaxies begin as a seed with that potential, or as a set of basic particles that accidentally produced it?