One might start with the following "realist recipe' for obtaining an understanding of how the world is: we choose our best theories; we read off the relevant features of those theories and then we assert that an appropriate relationship holds between those features and the world. These features might be theoretical terms, say, and the relationship would be that of reference between that term and the associated object; or they might be features such as the laws and symmetries of the theory and the relationship might be that of representation, however construed.