Lacewing wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:17 am
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 1:50 am
Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:41 pm
What causes matter to behave?
Nothing, "causes," matter to behave...
If by, "causes matter to behave," is meant "what is the explanation or correct description of matter's behavior," it may said it is, "energy," so long is it is understood that energy is only an expression of the entity's behavior due to it's own mass, gravitational attraction, and electro-magnetic attracting and repulsion--not something independent of the physical entity's own nature.
All matter is made of particles, right?
Not really. Down to the level of atoms, science can probably be, "pictured," as, "made of particles," like little specks of physical matter, but science abandons that picture at the sub-atomic level. Not since the Rutherford and Bohr models of the atom have electrons, protons, and neutrons been pictured as particles:
Atoms are no longer pictured as tiny particles, but more as, "clouds," or, "waves," as in the Schrodinger (or quantum) model of an atom.
Lacewing wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:17 am
Particles have energy, right?
Well, yes, but they also have mass, momentum, charge, shape, size, etc. but they are all only attributes, not things or stuff out of which things are made, like, "parts."
Lacewing wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:17 am
So why wouldn’t things BE what they’re made of?
Everything that actually exists as a physical entity that can be perceived is whatever it is made of (and, of course, how those parts are assembled). Energy, mass, momentum, charge, however, are not, "parts." Not, "things," or, "stuff," anything is made of. They are attributes and characteristics.
Lacewing wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 3:17 am
Also, why couldn’t/wouldn't there be an exchange of some kind of information, or cooperative activity, or other effect between particles and entities?
I didn't say there couldn't, but you'll have to explain what you mean by information since that concept has become so distorted since Shannon's principles of measuring the fidelity of electronic transmission was called, "information theory," and what you mean by, "exchange," information. Physical things certainly do not, "talk to each other," at any level.