Is Reality Layered? A Metaphysical Framework for Emergence

This paper proposes Layered Reality Theory (LRT), a three-tiered metaphysical framework designed to reconcile the apparent incompatibility between quantum mechanics and classical–relativistic descriptions of the world. LRT distinguishes a base layer of generative potential, a quantum layer of structured possibility, and a macro layer of realised actuality, linked by a principle of coherence-by-fit that governs how actualisations must remain consistent with the evolving macro record. This layered architecture treats quantum mechanics and relativity as complementary descriptions applying to different ontological levels, rather than as rival accounts of a single domain, and interprets familiar quantum features—superposition, interference, entanglement, decoherence, and collapse—as manifestations of sequential actualisation rather than anomalies requiring new dynamics. Extending the same logic to cosmology yields conceptual reinterpretations of temporal succession, spacetime structure, massless particles, vacuum behaviour, gravity, and cosmogenesis, offered as heuristic extrapolations rather than physical models. A minimal toy formalism shows that the core commitments of the ontology can be expressed schematically, suggesting avenues for further development. LRT is presented as an interpretive framework aimed at increasing conceptual coherence across domains of physics that typically resist unification.