What physics gets wrong about the idea of "fundamental"

"If all you start with are the fundamental building blocks of nature - the elementary particles of the Standard Model and the forces exchanged between them - you can assemble everything in all of existence with nothing more than those raw ingredients. That's the most common approach to physics: the reductionist approach. Everything is simply the sum of its parts: no more and no less. These simple building blocks, when combined together in the proper fashion, can come to build up absolutely everything that could ever exist within the Universe and explain the full suite of phenomena that have ever occurred, with absolutely no exceptions."

"Humans, for example: are composed of organs, which are themselves made out of cells, which are composed of molecules, which themselves are made of atoms, which in turn are made of fundamental subatomic particles: electrons, quarks, and gluons. In fact, everything we can directly observe or measure within our reality is made out of the particles of the Standard Model, and the expectation is that someday, science will reveal the fundamental cause behind dark matter and dark energy as well, which thus far are only indirectly observed."

"But this particular interpretation of the reductionist approach might not be the full story, as it omits two key aspects that govern our reality: boundary conditions and the top-down formation of structures. Both play an important role in our Universe and might be essential to our notion of "fundamental" as well. This might come as a surprise to some people, and might sound like a heretical idea on its surface."

Elementary particles of the Standard Model and the forces between them are often treated as sufficient ingredients to build all existing phenomena through a reductionist approach. Observed matter follows a hierarchy from organs to cells to molecules to atoms to subatomic particles such as electrons, quarks, and gluons. Measurable reality is expected to be composed of Standard Model particles, with dark matter and dark energy anticipated to have fundamental causes revealed by future science. A limitation of strict reductionism is that it can omit boundary conditions and top-down formation of structures. These factors may govern how fundamental notions apply to the universe and may be necessary for a complete explanation.

Read at Big Think