The Physical Referent of the Ground of Being: A Metaphysical Interpretation of the Quark-Gluon Plasma

This thesis argues that the theological and philosophical concept of God, understood as the primordial, undifferentiated ground of being rather than a personal agent, finds its physical referent in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) of the early universe. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, a systematic structural isomorphism is established between the properties of the QGP as described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and descriptions of primordial unity across multiple philosophical and theological traditions, including the apeiron of Anaximander, the Brahman of the Upanishads, the Tao of Laozi, and the Deus sive Natura of Spinoza. The isomorphism spans six dimensions: temporal priority, undifferentiated character, generative capacity, universality, dynamism, and enforced unity through color confinement. Second, under a framework of naturalized metaphysics informed by Ladyman and Ross and the structural realism of French, this systematic isomorphism is argued to license the identification of the QGP as the physical referent of the metaphysical concept. This identification is interpretive, not empirical: it operates at the level of philosophical argument rather than scientific proof, and the thesis acknowledges that physics underdetermines the metaphysical claim. This thesis proposes a novel systematic identification of the quark-gluon plasma as a physical referent of the ground of being — an argument not previously advanced in the literature — and derives the dissolution of the problem of evil as a structural consequence of the framework. This work is continued by "Color Confinement and Priority Monism: A Grounding-Theoretic Model of Individuation in QCD" (Pinsonneault, 2026, Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18603858), and "Dissolving the Problem of Evil: A Naturalized Non-Agential Ground in the Ontology of Quantum Chromodynamics" (Pinsonneault, 2026, Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19023685).