  We begin by surveying the historical positions in different attempts to
understand the material world since the rise of modern science, with specific
focus on the role of Cartesian primary qualities in explanatory
conceptualisation. Moreover the opening chapter argues that although
explanatory narratives are essentially epistemological constructions, they
require a general metaphysical backing through the explainer's and explainee's
commitments to take the concepts and higher structures composed of them as
directly referential. Two methodological perspectives on theory construction,
Einstein's division into principle and constructive theories, are then
delineated along the lines of their metaphysical and explanatory potential, and
presented as the research instrument with which to approach the
specific-case-study instances of quantum theory reconstruction. A specific
strategy of arguing for scientific realism ('the simple transcendental
strategy') is then presented and connected to the challenges that the phenomena
(EPR correlations and 'teleportation') from the domain of contemporary quantum
theory pose for it. The opening chapter concludes with a survey of the general
models of explanation and their position with respect to the
principle-constructive dichotomy introduced above. Finally, an explanatory
model containing extended material-like entities along with further primitives,
universal laws of temporal evolution, is argued for. Consequently, in the
interest of a wholesome realistic response to the sceptical challenge about the
explanatory aims of science, we recommend that even the common sense conceptual
framework replaces the extended material structure with 'generalised things' as
re-identifiable invariants through change as the fundamental unit of the
realist ontology.
