A crucial feature of scientific knowledge is that it informs us about the nature of the world that goes far beyond what we can observe. Many philosophers of science assume a realistic understanding of the natural sciences, according to which the best-confirmed theories and research findings of mature, modern natural sciences provide at least approximately true descriptions of the physical reality that exists independently of humans and their theoretical constructs. They view it as the goal of the sciences to provide us with such insights and believe that knowledge about things that extend beyond the directly observable is possible. The status of scientific theories, and particularly the question of whether these theories are truly true as a whole, is addressed in the realism-antirealism debate.