Realism

realism, in philosophy, a term used in two different ways to refer to the relation between ideas and reality. The word is used in metaphysics, which studies the nature of reality, to refer to the view that ideas are the basic reality, existing independently of both man's mind and the physical world.

This view was developed by the ancient Greek thinker Plato, and it has often been associated with some types of the broader philosophy called idealism. Metaphysical realism was early attacked by Aristotle, who held that it tended to undermine the reliability of sense knowledge by denying that the world of the senses is basically real. Aristotle held that man derives his ideas from sensations, which provide generally reliable information about the real qualities of things. Thus, in epistemology, which studies the nature of knowledge, the word "realism" came to mean the view that a real world exists independently of man's consciousness and ideas and that the senses provide real knowledge of it.