The Infinite Layered Web of Reality: An Emergentist Framework for Multi-Scale Ontology Without Foundational Reductionism

Reality is best understood not as a single reducible substrate with a final foundational layer, but as an infinite, coexisting web of layered structures. At each ontological scale, necessity, contingency, and meaning emerge through distinct dynamics—sometimes fixed by symmetries or invariants, sometimes fluid under renormalization-group flow, and often exhibiting both aspects simultaneously—while the entire edifice remains interconnected in a self-consistent whole. This paper formalizes the author's core thesis as the Infinite Layered Web (ILW) model, integrating insights from effective field theory (EFT), Wilsonian renormalization, hierarchical complexity theory, and emergentist ontology in the philosophy of physics. We argue that no ultimate foundational level exists; scientific and philosophical exploration proceeds indefinitely across scales without collapse to a single principle. The framework reconciles the successes of reductionist methods with irreducible ontological pluralism and offers a non-reductive yet unified account of reality. Implications for quantum gravity, spacetime emergence, biology, and epistemology are discussed.