The Nature of Physical Reality : A Philosophy of Modern Physics

Preliminary survey of reality -- Ways of arriving at reality -- What is immediately given? -- Departure from the immediate; constructs -- Metaphysical requirements on constructs -- Empirical confirmation -- Space and time -- System, observables, and states -- Physics of discrete systems -- Physics of continua -- Thermodynamics -- The role of definitions in science -- Probability -- Statistical mechanics -- Reality: a first outline -- The breakdown of physical models -- Basic ideas of quantum mechanics -- Uncertainty and measurements -- Causality -- The exclusion principle -- The contours of reality.