Realism holds that:

• Concepts used in human knowledge refer to a physical reality which has priority
• Knowledge is discovered rather than created
• Truth is determined by the correspondence between knowledge and the physical world

Idealism holds that:

• The world as we know it is a construction of the mind
• Human knowledge is a subjective or social construction that does not necessarily correspond to the outside world
• All knowledge is affected by language and culture
• The truth of statements depends on their coherence with the rest of the knowledge