Quantum theory... formalism... uses no more than linear algebra and vector spaces. ...A particularly nice and accessible presentation of the requisit… - Tim Maudlin

Physics aspires to a sort of universality that is unique among empirical sciences and holds, in that sense, a foundational position among them.

[P]hysical theories are neither realist nor antirealist. That is... a . It is a person's attitude toward a physical theory that is either realist or antirealist. ...[T]he theory toward which Osiander was antirealist and Galileo realist is one and the same theory. The theory itself is neither.

[T]he most general question we can ask about matter is what sort of thing it is. ...[W]e might hold that matter is made of point-like particles, or of fields, or of one-dimensional strings, or of some combination of these, or of something else altogether. Given any of these ...there are further, more specific questions ...We will be concerned with the most general questions, rather than the more specific ones.