The paper challenges the assumption, common amongst
philosophers, that the reality described in the fundamental theories of microphysics
is all the reality we have. It will be argued that this assumption is in
fact incompatible with the nature of such theories. It will be shown further
that the macro-world of three-dimensional bodies and of such qualitative
structures as colour and sound can be treated scientifically on its own terms,
which is to say not only from the perspective of psychology but also ontologically.
A new sort of emergentist position will be defended, one which yields the
basis of a method for describing the perceptually salient macroscopic world
in mathematical terms. Broadly, it will be argued that the macroscopic world
exists in virtue of certain specific sorts of boundary-patterns in the field
of what is captured by the theories of microphysics.