How does the way things appear to us relate to the way things really are? Science tells us that the world is very different from the way we experience it. John Heil offers an explanation of why the scientific image of the world that we get from physics is our best guide to the nature of reality--to what the appearances are appearances of.

John Heil is professor of philosophy at Washington University in St Louis and at Durham University, and an Honorary Research Associate at Monash University. He works primarily on topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind and is author of a number of books, including The Universe as We Find It (Oxford, 2012), From an Ontological Point of View (Oxford, 2003), Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2012), The Nature of True Minds (Cambridge, 1992), and Perception and Cognition (California, 1983). He is Editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

• 1: Metaphysics


• 2: Ontological Categories


• 3: Substance and Property


• 4: Essences, Kinds, Universals


• 5: Qualities and Powers


• 6: Qualities Unbound


• 7: Causation


• 8: Emergence and Downward Causation


• 9: Hylomorphism


• 10: The Art of the Possible


• 11: Brute Fact


• 12: Roots of Things


• 13: Reconciliation


• 14: Agency


• Epilogue