ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book also aims to develop the metaphysics of scientific realism to the point where it begins to take on the characteristics of a first philosophy. As most people understand it, scientific realism is not yet such a theory. Nevertheless, the original arguments that led to scientific realism may be deployed more widely than they were originally to fill out a more complete picture of what there is. This picture is still neither clear nor comprehensive enough to be accepted as definitive. It is not clear enough, because there is an ongoing dispute about what kinds of properties or relations there must be supposed to be in the world, and it is not at present comprehensive enough to deal with quantum mechanics, non-locality or the phenomena of temporal passage.
