Reality is Real

The world is real and perceivable, independent of human awareness. This is the first foundational assumption: that there is something there to know, and that what is there does not depend on us for its existence.

Reality is anything or everything past, present and future in our surroundings. Stuff and the knowledge about stuff are two separate things. Stuff exists in the world; knowledge exists in the mind. The two have a relation, but they are not the same thing. The chair you sit in does not require your attention to remain a chair.

All physical materials have a set of features by which they can be characterized. These features are independent of human awareness of them. The mass of a stone is its mass whether or not anyone has weighed it. The temperature of a room is its temperature whether or not a thermometer is in the room. Observation reveals these features; it does not invent them.

This assumption is what makes science possible at all. If reality were a product of the mind that perceives it, there would be nothing to discover, only things to make up. Macroscopic chemistry begins by accepting that reality holds steady while we look at it. Without this acceptance, every observation would dissolve under the weight of who is doing the observing.