If "fundamental" means something that is at the root of everything, then the physical laws and the objects to which they apply seem to be fundamental. But by looking at the mathematical structure of various theories in physics, we see that "fundamentalness" is relative, revealing a holistic nature. Various types of holism also appear in quantum theory, in Bohm's idea of implicate order, and in the holographic principle. This essay goes beyond these, by proposing a type of fundamentalness as a mathematically consistent basis for these forms of holism, the physical laws, and the ontology of physics. The discussion is based on various examples from particle physics and its mathematical formulation, and implications to what is "fundamental" are analyzed.
Cristinel Stoica