No interpretation of quantum mechanics can be wholly comprehended or validated before carefully investigating all of its details. I begin such an investigation of the present interpretation in the next chapter. But some of these details will prove rather intricate. The reader may need help in seeing the forest formed by the trees, and the skeptical reader may require encouragement before he or she agrees to enter its thickets. In this first chapter I therefore present a preliminary account of the basic ideas of the interpretation to be given, which may serve as a guide to what is to follow. Just as parts of a travel guide may seem puzzling before one actually visits the region described, so also parts of this chapter will likely seem much clearer when they are reread in the light of the rest of the book.

There is another reason for beginning with a general overview. The present interpretation arose as what seemed to be the most promising way of implementing a certain general approach to quantum theory. But, though I am confident of the worth of this approach, the present interpretation may well come to be regarded as only a fruitful first attempt at its detailed implementation, requiring more or less extensive technical revision if it is to prove ultimately satisfactory. If so, this overview may continue to be useful as a guide to an interpretation whose technical framework differs more or less radically from that underlying the present interpretation.